2fps

I’m stealing the word Whelpscapades from Nocturne’s resident resto shammy Zenhakar to describe our raid last night.

Many whelps? Yeah. Many.

This is what happens when your raid is mostly comprised of Burning Crusade kids that never went back to do old world stuff. People pull aggro on Ony before the tank positions her and subsequently half the raid gets a cleave in the face, people stand with their backs to the whelp pits while simultaneously standing too close to Ony’s tail and are then confused as to what’s happened, etc.

I thought whelps were only in phase 2!?

Amazingly we did not down Onyxia last night. We stomped our way through the Coliseum once again and I picked up a very horrific looking belt upgrade but then we got curbstomped by one of the most well-known bosses in the game.

The part that screwed us up the most was the transition from phase 2 to phase 3. Invariably, each time we were about to bring Ony down we were dealing with a very fresh spawn of whelps. If dps had been about 200 to 400 dps faster or slower we probably could have been fine but with Aurorai having to pick up the big dragon and me having to pick up the dragonkin add in the back… it just got dicey. On the last attempt of the night there was a rolling blackout that hit Auro, Zindo and Gorrok right at the phase change.

Annoying that we didn’t down her but hey, at least we’ll have something to do on Sunday.

As an aside, bringing a raid of nearly all melee dps makes for a hella long phase 2.

If I were to spec into Unholy for tanking now that the patch is released I would probably go with this build.

Subversion for the extra crit on Scourge Strike since Unholy needs some help with single target threat. Bare minimums in Wandering Plague, Scent of Blood so points can be spent in Bladed Armor. Floater point in the perma-ghoul which can be moved somewhere else like Desolation or Necrosis, not certain which would be better for threat quite yet as I haven’t had time to run any tests.

Anyway, I just wanted to put this out there for anyone looking to try out Unholy tanking and needing some ideas for specs to use.

I wondered how and if they’d handle Bone Shield’s overpoweredness when they reduced its cooldown back down to a minute. Mmochampion has new patch notes listed today that address the issue.

• Bone Shield: This ability now has 3 charges instead of 4. Cooldown reduced to 1 minute.
• Glyph of Bone Shield: This glyph now grants 1 additional charge instead of 2.

So instead of six charges when glyphed, it’ll have 4 total. Hopefully this will mean it will have a decent and reasonable uptime instead of being completely broken. I like Unholy and all but its nice to have a choice between tanking trees instead of being shunted into just one.

This is the part where I smirk at the paladins, warriors and druids.

In 3.2.2, Vampiric Blood, Unbreakable Armor and Bone Shield are going back to a one minute cooldown. Icebound Fortitude will be (as it has for a little while now) on a two minute cooldown.

When the new patch changes were first leaked on mmochamp a day or two ago it wasn’t readily apparent that the cooldowns on the talented signature abilities had been reduced. All I saw was that they were reducing Vampiric Blood’s duration and hacking the bonus time that the glyph gave as well. I blanched, suffered an aneurysm, started rebuilding an Unholy spec and then fell into a childish, stubborn pout. I was quite relieved and a little surprised to see more of the picture. Two thumbs up on these changes.

This is how I always thought things should have been after the first time they nerfed the talented signature tanking cooldowns, i.e. Vampiric Blood, Unbreakable Armor and Bone Shield.

You see, once upon a time the signature tank cooldowns for Death Knights were all on a one minute cooldown. Icebound Fortitude, a baseline tank cooldown, was also on a one minute cooldown. This setup was deemed to be overpowered. The solution Blizzard chose was to double the length of the cooldown on the talented signature abilities and to leave Icebound Fortitude alone.

I facepalmed when that change was rolled out. It seemed fairly obvious to me that out of the four cooldowns it was Icebound Fortitude that was the most troublesome. The talented cooldowns are all very good yes, but they’re not as heavyhanded as a simple "You take half as much damage now" ability.

Vampiric Blood for instance boosts your health and increases the effectiveness of healing done to you. I like this concept. You’re still going to take just as much damage as you would have without the cooldown but your ability to handle that damage is greatly improved.

Unbreakable Armor is a Frost thing and therefore not something to be cared about. It wasn’t any good at the time anyway.

Bone Shield was a little iffy, I admit. With high avoidance levels it was potentially very powerful with a one minute cooldown. Get lucky enough and its uptime could be extremely high.

Then you have Icebound Fortitude. Something not spec-dependent and is simple, straightup damage reduction. A lot of damage reduction in fact.

I always said that the talented abilities should have kept their minute long cooldowns and Icebound Fortitude should be on a 2 minute cooldown.

Enter 3.2.2 and look what’s happening.

Yeah. I approve.