End to all your shard problems

Seriously, I get a bit ticked off when people complain about shards. Even on extended wipe nights, it's entirely possible to maintain at or near a full bag of shards all night long.

How? It's an amazing secret called Drain Soul. As soon as a wipe is inevitable (somebody critical dies and can't be/won't be rezed) start draining, especially if you're going to "just go with it," you'll get plenty of time to refill. Drain soul averages over 1 shard per full channel, the glyph procs off of tick shards and not just death shards now, and the proc rate is a lot less terrible than it used to be.

If you can get 2 shards per wipe, assuming you're using 4 per attempt (pet, soulwell, soulstone, shatter), you can go twice as many attempts before running out. If you can average 3 per attempt, you'll almost be able to outlast the 40 attempt limit.

Other do's and don't's to help you out in the break.

Hunter tears bring up good point... unintentionally.

Very little good seems to be coming from this thread, but there's one interesting post in the lot, which is mostly interesting because it applies to more than just hunters. Disappeared in an increasingly surreal back and forth between hunters and Ghostcrawler... which peaks around the time GC actually downloads simcraft and a DPS spreadsheet and starts kicking ass with actual numbers.

Anyway, argument at hand is about DPS neglecting survival talents. The claim is that we blame the game or healers for death and ignore the fight in favor of DPS.

The reality is a long shot off, and it also explains exactly why DPS specs almost universally ignore survival talents. It's not a mater of burdening healers, it's actually the exact opposite. I'll actually let GC explain it himself: "Now days someone is at 100%, will hit 100% in the next couple of GCDs, or will be dead."

Rant continues in the break, with cataclysm speculation and such.

The real threat problem

I'm probably one of the biggest "make your tanks better" person when threat problems come to the boards. All four tank classes have the tools to pull through the sort of threat warlocks and mages put out on gimmick fights. Enough have done it that the only explanation for those that can't do the same on ungimmicked fights is a lack of skill.

But if it's so simple, then why do warlocks specifically get singled out as the agro whores? Well... There is a threat issue, but it's not with warlocks. It's with almost everybody else.