Nerd Culture Podcast

Welcome to my latest WoW spec – Shadow of a Doubt.  This spec is designed around the dismal chance of hope that you opponent(s) will have to defeat you, bombarding them with instant cast Shadow Bolts.

click here for the Shadow of a Doubt spec @ wowhead.com

The method to enact this madness is to make sure all enemies have Corruption on them at all times whether it’s from a hard cast, or a Soulburn: Seed of Corruption. I have tried this spec with a minimal gear setup on combat dummies, and if you have enough targets taking damage from Corruption, you can pretty much just cast instant Shadow Bolts most of the time, until a few of the targets are dead, or you heavily damage them all, depending on how much you scroll through your targets.

ROTATION

The rotation is to pick your main target then

Haunt > Shadowbolt > Unstable Affliction > Corruption > Bane of Agony

Ensure any other targets have Corruption and Bane of Agony on them at all times. Continue to bombard your main target with Shadow Bolts until dead then move to the next target etc. Don’t forget to use Howl of Terror to keep them off of you if you need to. If you start running low on hit points, using Drain Life will not only help to keep your life up, but it will also allow extra chances of casting more instant Shadow Bolts!

PET

I recommend the Fel Hunter as the active demon for this spec. Its ability to remove magic and deal damage to the primary target is handy.

BEST STATS

I recommend a high amount of Haste, followed by Crit. This will allow your Corruption and Drain Life ticks to proc more often for the chance of instant Shadow Bolts, and provide higher damage from the ticks and bolts.

A PvP restoration spec for Druids.

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0cbZcZMcuIdfMu0ho:mocsroz0m

This spec is set to be able to heal in a variety of ways, but can deal a little bit of damage too. If the enemy target happens to be low, you can help whittle their health down, due to Fury of Stormrage and Starlight Wrath.  Most people say that the best part of Druid heals is always the heals over time, however Healing Touch can also be a very formidable spell if it’s given a chance.  With the chance to proc Living Seed, Healing Touch becomes stronger, as well as the Glyph of Healing Touch, which decreases the cooldown on Natures Swiftness.  The Glyph of Entangling Roots should also help to keep the enemies off of you while you are healing friends, or casting Wrath on your enemies.

Some may wonder why I chose to put the Feral spec minor Glyph of Dash into this spec.  The reason for that, is due to Furor, you can turn to cat form (keeping 100% energy), run to a friend in trouble, and either throw a quick Pounce or Rip, and then go back to healing your ally – faster and more often due to the 20% faster cooldown.  Barkskin is needed frequently as well as Tree of Life form to help keep yourself and the team alive during stressful situations.  All in all, this spec should be able to heal very well, and do some damage if your enemy is nearing death, which is needed to make it viable for PvP encounters.

Until next time,

-WoW Yoda

Welcome to a special edition WoW Yoda!

My last spec, Conviction, received quite a bit of feedback, including this post by Zendfrim:

‘Oh great WOW Yoda, please give a rogue pvp spec to help with ripping the ugly faces off the horde.’

Who am I to deny such a request, especially since I too hate the Horde! So, here is the spec I made just for you Zendfrim, the Face Ripper :

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#fchfrsGzoGobh0bZb:qRVkwmzVc

This spec should have enough points to give you enough survivability in PvP to last long enough to “rip” the ugly horde faces off.  The interesting part about this spec, is that you can actually move faster in stealth than you can without it.  Also, while you are stealth (and just coming out of stealth) Overkill will give 30% additional energy regeneration, to help you tear up your enemy even faster.  Plus, if you have the time, Blackjack will allow you to gain an upper hand on any melee enemy for 8 secs, with the 70% reduction to their damage.  To further assist with your survival, you will want to try to keep your Recuperate on whenever you can, since that will be a total of 16% damage reduction at all times from just talents alone.

As for your poisons, I would recommend Deadly and Wounding.  They should help out to prevent them from healing, and also does great damage over time, and allows for Envenom.  Also, using Rupture and Garrote is a good idea, because Venomous Wounds will get to deal its damage more often.  Just remember to take your time, you should have enough dots, to really chip away the enemy hit points until you are ready to throw out those finishers and Mutilates to gain your points.  Also, you don’t have to wait for 5 combo points to use your Recuperate, because the 6% gain even for a few seconds from a couple of points, will be more than worth it.

UPDATE

Here are my updated findings on Face Ripper.  With only 2 pieces of PvP gear on this toon this spec has the survivability of having 5 pieces of PvP gear.  The main things that seems low, for the moment, is the damage.  My main reason for this is due to the nature of it being based mainly on dots.  However, even with this being the case, I have started to reforge my gear to increase my mastery, thus greatly improving my poison damage.  This has started to prove to enhance my damage output by a great deal.

One tip that will greatly enhance the damage, is to use Deadly Poison on the off hand weapon, if the off hand is either slower or the same speed as your main hand weapon.  Then, make your other weapon have Instant or Wounding.  Also, be sure to use Envenom at every opportunity, because not only does it do more damage, but it allows you a higher chance to apply Deadly Poison, and if you are at 5 stacks, it automatically applies the damage of your other poison.

I hope this helps you tear them to pieces and thank you so much for your interest with nerdculturepodcast!

Good luck

-WoW Yoda

Welcome to my second WoW spec – Conviction, a Discipline Priest DPS spec for leveling and PvP.

Click the link to open Wowhead and see the talents & Glyphs –

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfGorRsrcRbo0hZh:cmqdVaMzc

ROTATION

Shield > Holy Fire > Smite (until your Holy Fire debuff dissolves) > Penance.

If you want to throw in some more damage or a heal, then I recommend doing so after the Smite, and before the Penance, that way, you get the fullest effect from your Glyph of Smite. Keep your shield up at all times.

OTHER

You will need a good amount of spirit, because this spec can be a bit of a mana hog.

If you want to do some healing, remember that your Smite heals a friendly target within 15 yards of your enemy target, for 100% of its damage (even more if you have just Holy Fired your enemy target!).

TESTS

This is a spec that can prevent and deal damage very well. It has been tested for PvP as well as leveling, and soon to be tested in a few instances. The rotations are very simple, and can be improvised on the stop with little DPS loss.

The PvP test have gone very well, with the only complaint being mana replenishment. That aside, the healing and the damage have been above par, since after all, when this spec deals damage, it heals, and when it’s preventing damage, it deals it too.

UPDATE: I originally thought that this spec would run out of steam too easily for instances to really be of any use. However, contrary to my thoughts, this spec actually was never mana starved. Even with a disc priest as the healer, since that healers shields were better than mine thus preventing the talent that returns mana when the shield breaks, I only ran out of mana one time, which my shadow fiend promptly corrected. The specs damage was very nice, and also made “topping off” possible due to all of the damage spell’s healing potential. All in all…I wish I had made this spec sooner because the supposed benefits for the Shadow spec in Cataclysm were actually extremely contradictory and made leveling from 80 to 85 a chore, whereas I leveled from 83 to 85 with Conviction very smoothly.

Hi, my name is Brian, and welcome to the first WoW Yoda post.

I am an avid gamer, especially World of Warcraft and any co-op game I can play with my wife and family. One of the many things I enjoy about WoW is the customization with Classes. I really enjoy going against the standard specs and mixing things up for fun. WoW Yoda is where I will share my WoW Talent spec ideas with you all and hopefully show you some fun ways to play your toons. I am also available to answer spec questions.

These builds are for players who want to have a bit of fun, and are not intended for the hard line raiders who want to squeeze out every last point of DPS.

So, for my first build I introduce HolySlam, a Holy Paladin DPS spec that uses Holy Shock, Exorcism, and Judgement to slam down your enemies. I hope you like it.

Click the link to open Wowhead and see the talents & Glyphs – http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sbIrdrbhhbbGZcb:aMmmfzMmc

ROTATION

Exorcism x2 > Holy Shock > Exorcism x2, Judgement, then just rotating between Exorcisms until Holy Shock and/or Judgement are off of cooldown, and whenever you have 3 Holy Power, use Inquisition (if available), or use Word of Glory if you need the health. Then, when the enemy is almost dead, use your Hammer of Wrath. If you need a damage boost, you can use Divine Purpose, or Avenging Wrath.

OTHER

Use Seal of Truth, Blessing of Kings and Retribution Aura

TESTS

I have been doing some tests with holy slam, and the levelling with this spec has been awesome.  I have always had enough mana, once I upgraded all my gear to intellect, and the damage as well as healing has been above par.  Also, I could easily fend off groups of enemies by using Consecration and Holy Wrath, as well as throwing in a Divine Shield if necessary.  I would say that the main problem with the spec is worrying about caster delay when getting hit by enemy attacks however, that wasn’t even so bad considering that my exorcism casts in only 1.2 seconds (after Judgement).  Also if you are in peril, you can use your Holy Shock to give yourself a quick heal, followed up by a Word of Glory.  Also, with burning your Divine Plea cool down frequently enough, you will never have mana problems.

As for PvP, thus far since I have only completed about 4 matches, it has been doing surprisingly well.  I have only black smithing gear, but even when the tallies came up for damage and healing, I was in the top 50% for damage, and the top 25% for healing.  Now, this test was performed in AV so I know that this was partly due to some players at are standing in towers defending, however, during those tests, I was defending in the tower with them.  I still wouldn’t call this conclusive for PvP, but it does look very promising.

My test with holy slam was in the Halls of Origination.  Now, I’m not generally a huge high end instance person, but, this spec did surprise me at it’s effectiveness during the run.  However, there were some changes I had to make to prevent frequent situations of running out of mana.  For one, I had to use my Seal of Insight almost all the time.  The 15% of base mana as well as my HeartSong enchant and glyphed Divine Plea made it so I rarely had to drink from my supplies.  As for the damage chart, I was roughly 22-25% and second to only the Arcane Mage.  I didn’t really look at his gear to see what all he had, since I was testing my spec, and if they were from quests or from instances.