Well, technically that's not true... some of these are actually quite major. My last couple posts have been pretty few and far between, and I think that their quality has been a little lacking in terms of details and analysis. "DO YOUR JOB REY" my followers exclaim into the night, their girlfriends looking slightly perplexed thinking "what an odd thing to yell in bed." Here's a picture of it:



Yes, I realize the text is retarded... I'm no photoshop wizard, I'll admit it. ANYWACE, as most of you know, I respec'd BACK to a Shred-based spec for more burst damage, and more than before, I've taken basically all the dps talents; truth be told, this feels a little dirty because 1) I stole the spec from Ampere, and 2) it feel extremely PvE-esque as it takes all the offensive talents and really only one defensive.

Here is the spec.

You will all notice a rather large difference from whta I've always preached until now: it doesn't have Protector of the Pack, it doesn't have Natural Shapeshifter, and it does have Heart of the Wild... it also takes 2/2 Improved Mark of the Wild. Okay, Protector of the Pack is amazing - 12% less damage while in bear form is just extremely handy, but it really doesn't come up as particularly useful except against double dps teams... and if double dps teams force you into bear form enough for that 12% damage to matter, you're in trouble. I'm not convinced, but I'm trying the spec without it to get a little more damage output. Natural Shapeshifter is good against mages... if all you play is some variant of mage+x, then you'll want to take both the shapeshifting reduction talents, but we don't face many mage teams, so I can forgo this talent. Improved Mark of the Wild is pretty good, aside from 2% more stats all over, which isn't much but does add up in top-tier gear, it also gives MotW more resist and 14 more stat points to all stats for both me and guntir... this is pretty good. I'm still on the fence for iMotW, but those 2 points would just otherwise go into PotP, so we'll try it out and see how it works.

Heart of the Wild... I harp on this talent so much. It gives 20% intellect, which is negligible in basically every case. It gives 10% more attack power in cat form, which basically grants another 700 or so... this is the complete opposite of negligible, but it's JUST more damage. It also gives 10% stam in bear form, which is good, but not amazing. Personally, I don't feel like this talent really should be a 5-point talent, and I am always bashing it for being under-itemized... I'm trying out the 10% attack power route... it's good for HUGE Shred crits, but not a make-or-break by any stance.

The other thing to note is dropping Glyph of Survival Instincts in favor of Glyph of Mangle. You need mangle up a lot, so making it last longer is better than SI giving more hp (I gibbed myself with Survival Instincts one too many times for me to love it completely... let alone put a glyph in for it). Also, instead of going with Glyph of Rip, which gives 4 more seconds on Rip, I went with Glyph of Berserk, partially for the extra damage and mostly for the 5 more seconds of fear immunity. I really cannot stress how amazing it is getting ~45 seconds of straight attacks off against a priest without a fear kicking in (say he fears and guntir dispels it immediately, then we get ~25 seconds of cooldown followed by 20 seconds of Berserk).


Okay, that being said, a conversation about user interfaces broke out in the comments of my last post, and I feel we should spend some time here. I personally like XPerl, it is extremely customizable and does a lot of things default that other UIs don't. Here are some of the things it does that I cannot live without:

1) Highlights member frames based on debuffs which you can dispel (poison makes them highlighted green, curses purple). This is amazing for seeing at a glance what needs to be dispelled off of whom without the bother of you having to watch your partner's buffs, when he turns green/purple, hit the appropriate button (macro'd to your partner, obviously).
2) Allows you to resize your unit frames. I have a problem with court vision... I can see players on the field and I'm focused on that... health pools and mana pools are harder for me to see, so I make my unit frames huge, but out of the way.
3) Allows you to move all your frames. This is pretty standard for all UI addons, but I like this one the best because it lets you move them and move their buffs/debuffs/etc from top to bottom, or however you like it.
4) Allows me to make MY debuffs bigger. Don't you hate it when you're looking at an opponent who has been riddled with debuffs and you can't see if Mangle is up, or Rip is up, or Rake is up!? Man... this addon lets me make MY debuffs twice the size of any others.... it's awesome.
5) It shows your mana pool ALL the time... cat, bear, whatever... it's there.
6) It shows combo points across the name-plate. This isn't a huge deal, but it's just a LOT easier for me with my court-vision, as I discussed in #2.
7) One thing this addon does that others don't really let me do, it let's me decide where I want my buffs/debuffs. Some addons will just put them with your unit frame, or up normally, or it'll do some weird mix. XPerl lets me decide everything about everything (without being so convoluted like Pitbull is).

Okay, the moment of truth... well not really. I have had this old video from season five sitting around, I don't know if I'm going to use it in the final video, but at the very least it is accessible via the web and it has my basic UI (along with us beating another 2k rogue+priest team... our arch nemeses... I hate NTEE). There's no music or anything, it's just one match on Lordaeron. I've moved some stuff around and added more macros and keybindings (less clicking... you'll see me move the mouse to click my trinket and barkskin... bad habits I've since worked out of).

Rogue+Priest

We also started running 3v3 a little bit. A guildy of ours basically messaged us with "can you carry me a bit in 3v3 to get me some PvP gear" and we responded, "sure." He's one of our Holy pallies, but we had him go Ret for 3v3 (might as well get on this cleave-gravy-train, amirite?). It's pretty hilarious, we're about 1700 MMR with him at the moment and still climbing. He is pretty green in the arena, but he is learning really quickly, and we really do carry him in some matches (went 2v3 essentially out the gate against a PMR team... I ended up ghosting the mage with 2 GCDs, he got Pain Suppression on the second GCD but died anyway, then I still had 15 seconds of Berserk so I killed the priest and it was history from there). It's a LOT of fun though, I have to say that Disc+Ret+Feral has some synergy (not as much as RestoShammy+Feral+HfB-rogue... which is a 2400 rated 3v3 team that Faril is running... just insane, give the druid TotT, open with Pounce, hit HfB, follow Pounce with Garrote, pop BL, watch stuff die), and we actually train fairly hard given he's using a Titansteel Destroyer and offspec pve gear mostly. Once we hit 1850 and he gets a tier1 weapon this team will be a powerhouse.