Nerd Culture Podcast

My Feral Frenzy spec will allow the user to harm foes while keeping him/herself safe.  The point of this spec is to keep a constant flow of damage on your enemies through bleeds, while making self healing better.  The first thing to know about Feral Frenzy is to remember your bleed attacks.  These are Rake, Rip and Thrash.  While going about making your enemies bleed, Feral Frenzy also likes to make you heal yourself easier for situations in which you may be in trouble, or just keep enemies off of you all together.

Displacer Beast will get you into position to start wreaking havoc on any enemies in the area, or out of a sticky situation if needed.  Nature’s Swiftness can give you a quick pick me up, and when mixed with Dream of Cenarius, will allow you do deal increased damage.  Mass Entanglement can be used if you bit off more than you could chew, allowing you to fall back, heal as needed, and join back into the fray.  Force of Nature, while in Feral Spec, causes your Treants to attack foes with an occasional stun, which will help you to apply bleeds or even heal if needed.  Ursol’s Vortex is also for the just in case situation to help keep enemies in 1 spot while you delve bleeds or run out to heal.

As for the glyphs I have chosen Cat Form, Prowl and Pounce for Major and with Aquatic Form, Stag and Grace for the minor.  Cat Form will allow better survivability in giving you better heals from your own dots or from the kindness of others.  Prowl allows faster movement to get to any foe that you want to Shred (or rather Ravage first, then Rip a little later) your enemy that much faster.  As for Pounce, more distance is always good.  The Minor glyphs for this spec are more or less for artistic value, except for Grace.  Though the player will more than likely be in cast form most of the time, there may be situations (like after healing) that you may fall from a cliff while in Human form, or another when falling… not likely, but still a chance.

All in all, this spec is designed to allow the druid to rip their foes to pieces while keeping the aggressor as healthy as possible.

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#dxUZ|tmVM0c

Mists of Pandaria is out and WoW Yoda makes his triumphant return!

To start out this wonderful occasion, we will begin with a Blood spec Death Knight.

http://www.wowhead.com/

My Life Render spec is all about throwing damage onto your opponents and gaining hit points for yourself as much as possible. After all, if Blizzard makes this a step up like Burning Crusade and Cataclysm were for those just entering the new lands, you will want to keep yourself alive to make sure you get those precious experience points.

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NCP is proud to welcome back the much loved WoW Yoda – with an Enhancement Shaman spec that will sledge your enemy into the ground!

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhZfIhcs0hRG

This is once again an open ended spec because there are so many options of what you, yes you, want to do with those left over 6 points.  However, before I get ahead of myself, let’s build the ground work for this spec before we get to those juicy extra points.

The Enhancement Shaman is first and foremost a melee combatant… or so they say! Even though you may be melee, you have no, “charge” skill to get into combat fast and start wailing on your enemy.  Instead you have the better option of bringing them to you, in a not so quick method as the Death Knight, but far more punishing. The reason why I say this, is because you can set down a Searing Totem and Flame Shock the enemy, which will start your Searing Flames DoT effect and also get you ready for a delightful Lava Lash due to the Improved Lava Lash talent. If you can, try to avoid lava lashing until you have the full 5 stacks. Also, while the enemy is walking/running to you, feel free to set down an Earthbond Totem to hopefully slow them to a crawl while they try to get to you, and then finally give them some Lightning Bolts until they finally make it to you. This is where the magic really happens!

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Here is my latest WoW Yoda spec for all the Rogue fans out there – Blood Spatter.

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#ff0fZZfhcfdu0MGo:mVM0kdmcz

This spec is designed to make your enemy bleed out all of their hit points as quickly as possible.

Start off with either your Ambush or your Garrotte (if the enemy is a caster), followed by using your Hemorrhage to force the enemy to bleed more, and for a higher percentage of their health. After that, you will want to use your Rupture when you have five combo points. Following your Rupture, you will want to continue using your Hemorrhage on the enemy and at five combo points, use Execute, this way your Serrated Blades refreshes for the full duration of your Rupture. With Coup de Grace and Glyph of Eviscerate, a ton of damage will be dealt.

However, if you have the luck of having a tank with you, or a PvP opponent that seems to enjoy presenting their back to your blades, then you will want to use your Backstab instead of Hemorrhage (except 1 time, because you always want to use Hemorrhage at least once to gain the 30% extra bleed damage).

Also, to improve your survivability (as you all know I like to do whenever possible), I have included Quickening and Deadly Momentum. The reason why Preparation wasn’t included, is because I personally would rather use 1 talent point where it could be used better than reducing 2 cool downs that are already very small, and 1 other cool down that doesn’t need to occur more often than its cool down allows already.

Poisons differ, depending on if you are doing PvP, instances, or PvE. For PvP, I would recommend using Crippling and either Deadly or Mind Numbing to help survivability. For instances, I would suggest Instant and a Deadly. Lastly, for PvE, you could easily go with two Instants, since enemies should die fast enough that Deadly won’t have time to do its damage fast enough.

Have fun and make your enemies bleed!

Welcome to my latest WoW Yoda spec – Withering Touch.

I usually don’t like Shadow Priests much, so I had to do quite a lot of testing and research before I got a spec I was proud to include as a WoW Yoda spec. After all, I have to protect my reputation!

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bcGZZGbGdMzrdbfo:RMkbzMVz0

I know that the first thing that will come to most people’s minds are some of the talents that grant spells – those of course being Silence, Archangel and Psychic Horror. My reasons for this are due to the fact that generally a 45 second cool down for only a 3-5 second effect on a target isn’t that good, especially since priests don’t get an interrupt, so you may as well just forego it. Archangel, which you would be using for its Dark Purpose, increases damage of your non damage over time abilities, which aren’t generally used except on trash so it’s only real purpose is just a 90 second delay on just a 5% increase to your mana and a little extra damage to maybe 2 Mind Blast castings. As for Psychic Horror, yes 10 seconds without a weapon is very bad for the melee target, and 3 seconds trembling in fear is also bad, however a 2 min cooldown ruins any benefits it may have. I would much rather prefer to save the points for something a little more useful.

So, now that I have that out of the way, here is the reasoning for what I have chosen for Withering Touch! Darkness is a prerequisite to increase the amount of damage your DoT spells will do and to decrease cast time of your Mind Blast, Vampiric Touch, and Mind Flay.  With this spec, your main goal is to gather at least one Shadow Orb through Shadow Word: Pain or Mind Flay, then cast your Mind Blast to gain your 10% DoT buff. The best part about that is that you don’t need all 3 Shadow Orbs to gain the full 10% and having more than 1 Orb doesn’t increase the DoT buff increase, so only 1 orb is needed and the rest is just gravy.  So you will want to keep as many enemies as possible to have your DoTs on them.

That being said this will require a lot of mana, which I have already thought of. Masochism, Vampiric Touch, Dispersion, Mental Agility, Veiled Shadows and Glyph of Spirit Tap will all assist in either reducing your mana cost or increasing your mana production. There are also plenty of damage increasing talents to help with efficiency, which I won’t name here since there are so many.

As for the rotation, on a single target – Vampiric Touch will be your opener, followed by your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Death, followed by Mind Flay, then continue with Mind Flay and Mind Blast until your DoTs run out, in which you will want to recast them. For multi targets it is slightly different – You will want to choose a target to be your “main” target. This will be the one that will have your Vampiric Touch and  Mind Blasts will be cast on. All enemies should have Shadow Word: Pain and you hit them with a Mind Sear. And remember to move around whenever you are casting any of your instant spells, this way you have a chance to proc your Shadowy Apparitions.

All in all, this spec will take down your enemy in writhing pain and agony in no time at all!