Well as I said before, it all comes down to seeing what DPS each class ends up with, on top of what they bring. If you compare UR to abom strength alone, you can't really make a decent comparison. You have to factor all the utility + personnal DPS between each, and it's too early to tell if enh shamans will be close or not to utility speced DKs, and if Bloodlust will offset that and so on.

That's the thing really, I don't expect blood/frost utility DKs to be equal to enh shamans myself, just close enough that you won't have to call the raid off when your enh shamans are not online. Currently enh shamans are way too vital for endgame raiding, and I think that's what they're trying to get away from. Shamans didn't get their pass yet though, so they might just slap a new fire totem at the bottom of enh tree that provides a small group based melee buff or whatever they see fit.

I'm just going by this WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Death Knight -> Talent Calculator

I'm assuming that this is updated since the hunter one has had all the new changes coming in the next push put in it's calculator, but I could be wrong. I just don't remember the talent trees for DK ever looking like that before. If I'm way off base here sorry for the confusion.

This is definitely not up to date. It has old bloodworms for example. This abom strength is old one too, and it's 10%str not 20%. The talents placement seems fine, but the tooltips are wrong, or at least a lot of the changed ones are.

Blizzard are having a lot of trouble with their WoTLK talent calculator, apparently. It seems that some tootips have been reverting to previous versions when other talents are updated.

In short, while you'd expect that Blizzard's talent calculators would be the most accurate, they are instead the least accurate.

It was this that really confused me. Also their was some talk to the change in the Hunter WOTLK thread. I really would rather see them change it just because it is a positioning nightmare for Hunters if they don't.

This thread has been really quiet lately, but a recent Gamona.de interview with J. Allen Brack and Tom Chilton has some interesting news.

Taken from mmo-champion:

* Level 80 premades planned to facilitate easier testing of beta's endgame content. Unsure whether it will be for existing servers, a new realm or both.

* PvE and PvP gear to be not so exclusive. You're expected to get some items for one area by doing the other.

* Retribution Paladin DPS found to be "a lot more damage than what we would expect."

* Target time to finish a dungeon should be less than an hour.

* Naxxramas will still be a single, large dungeon

* Naxxramas boss mechanics will be kept relatively intact, but changed to account for smaller raid size. Specific example: Non-tanking classes will be able to tank the Four Horsemen.

It was pretty obvious that the solution was going to be "let DPS tank". You don't even need a spell-steal gimmick; it was done with Kiggler and Capernian.

You could keep the flavour of the fight by balancing it around 5 tanks (4 + 1 floating at any one time). To accomplish this add in items which (a) allows every class to taunt (like the Tears on Archimonde allow every class to slowfall), and (b) allows any player to tank (similar to the bonus abilities on the legendaries on Kael). If necessary, add in some equalising buffs / debuffs, like Reliquary Phase 1.

I do think it's quite clever though that they're doing these mechanic changes to fit the bosses. I wouldn't be surprised if they'll take a page from this from this forum and place Mind-Controlling Orbs in the Razuvious encounter to let any class manipulate the students.

With premades available, I really hope they put on some sort of beta arena tournament so they can ensure classes/specs/abilities are somewhat balanced before going live.

Something like that would be brilliant, and contribute to the "unique" feel of the fight, unlike what I was demonstrating. I really hope they go down that path, or hell, even add some crazy twist whereby you're able to incapacitate (one of?) them in the same essence as the Dorothee event in Karazhan. That fight had some great potential, with each mob having it's own specific weakness. It'd be great to see a step up from that.

In a dream world, a specific ability/encounter trigger would cause the 4th Horseman to "drop" the Ashbringer; allowing a player to loot it, and temporarily gain control of that horseman whilst wielding it. You would then use that Horseman to tank one of the other Horsemen. However to maintain a "Magtheridon v1.0-esque" flavour, wielding the sword gradually corrupts the user, causing them to become Mind Controlled by the blade if they hold onto it for too long, forcing them to return it back to the death knight and repeat the entire cycle with another person. An encounter of such nature would really strike gold with me, but unfortunately I don't think the R&D team is willing to commit such extents of creativity. Just throw in some more AoE Fears, some Void Zones and a Frontal Cleave and hey! New and exciting raid challenges ahoy!

EDIT: Hell, it'd be cool if you could steal the sword via Pickpocket, or Disarm, or any such ability, providing a range of versatile options.

Just one small problem... none of the Four Horsemen has the Ashbringer, as Tirion Fordring now wields it (as seen in the Deathknight starting zone). Aditionally, Morgraine will be replaced by a new horseman, though it's currently unknown who that's going to be.

Or to extend this idea, you might only have to fight one horseman at a time in the 10-man version - kill one, then the next activates, and so on. With four seperate tanks and (presumably) a healer for each, you'll be pretty starved for DPS if you need to kill them all at once.

Alternatively they can simply remove the stacking debuff, allowing one healer to cover two tanks at once.

"It will be released the fifth of when it's ready" (Nov 5th sounds definitively their current target).

I have a short question the community having beta access.

What is the level requirement for non-gethering professions to have the possibility to reach the new maximum (which is AFAIK 450) skill ?

In short, you have to be lvl70 OR lvl80 to maximize tailoring, enchanting, etc to 450 ?

Thanks in advance !

I thought that was kind of a funny statement as well. I didn't really interpret it as really meaning the 5th of November though, but maybe it was a no so subtle hint. Who knows with these people.

The cinematic trailer link: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

Yeah, I feel like something is missing myself. Seeing the Frostwyrm (which really looked awesome!) was sort of expected because of the WotLK login screen where you see it fly around. Also, this video reminded me of a Warcraft 3 cinematic where Arthas returns to his father from Northrend.

Arthas Cinematic

I kinda feel like unless they have some sort of... reward for competing in the beta arena, it just can't be a true test of competition. People just don't play the same unless there's something at stake. Even something as simple as a non-combat pet or title or tabbard for getting top 10% would probably be enough, I think.

I'm 99.9% certain it was just a joke and that you shouldn't read anything into it.

Y'know, i really loved the cinematic.

It was different to the others, with a constant narrative monologue form King Terenas. This probably symbolises how much the expansion will revolve around Arthas as a whole.

I'm going to speculate here (we love that don't we xD). That dragon was fricking huge, much larger than a normal frost wyrm, and we have no visual of evidence of what actually happens to Malygos after you do the questline in Dragonblight. Could this be what is to come of him?

What exactly does this mean? That all the pieces become as wanted as the weapons? That they like how the weapons are popular with the pve crowd?

It actually doesn't look that big compared to the scourge soldiers in the valley, well, compared to players next to onyxia or the like.

That's a reference to the Fifth of Never.