Names are sacred for a reason

I work in information technology. My official job is to deploy service and maintain networks in homes and businesses throughout the Tri-Cities. However, the bulk of what I do falls into two categories: Security and privacy. Rule number one in both? Names are sacred.

Many industries, most notably the healthcare industry with their highly restrictive HIPAA regulations (which I experienced first hand working electronic data disposal several years ago), have extensive restrictions, some internal and some legal, all with one intent: To prevent people from connecting names to information. Names are powerful, even many people who are already dealing in personal information quail when personal becomes identifiable.

Hybrid Superiority

There's been a neverending stream of QQ about the superiority of hybrid classes since Molten Core was serious business and a guild actually let a priest go shadow and saw the damage the spec was capable in the days when casters barely scaled.

The argument has always been, "Nobody will ever bring a pure DPS class when a hybrid can do similar DPS and potentially tank or heal."

The argument is bullshit. For a lot of reasons. Click for just a fraction of them, but still a damn lot of reasons.

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.

BLIZZERD EHATS WAROLKS

Ever since the first fear nerf (which couldn't really be called a fear nerf, as it limited duration on all forms of CC in PVP), the favored cry of the bad has been "Blizzard hates Warlocks," sometimes accompanied by such favorites as, "They should just delete the class and give everyone a level 80 (class)," or, "The class serves no purpose anymore," or my personal favorite, "Things were so much better in [vanilla/BC/3.0]."

I've got a lot of opinions on this, but to sum them all up, warlocks right now are in a good place. Overall in Wrath of the Lich King, we've been in the best place we've been for PVE ever, though it's been a rough ride for PVPers.

BUT VANILLA WAS BETTER!


Ok, I'll bite, let's talk about how things used to be...