For many adding an additional tier / lockout to raid content only goes to increasing burnout of players who feel forced to run the additional raid content, but more casual minded raiders may find this way of raiding a welcome option.

My guild has always been casual by nature, and we have raided since Vanilla, nothing hurts more than telling a bunch of folks they have to sit in a casual guild.  You are saying we know you have limited time to play, but we are telling you that even though you made time and effort to show up, due to one of many reasons we just don’t have a place for you.  Conversely if you are a 10 man raiding guild, and only 9 people show up, or if you are a 25 and only 23 show up, do you PUG the rest? Do you call it?  Well in these scenarios Blizzard has created Flex Raiding which will provide options for teams who have a bit too many for a 10, or a bit too few for a 25 man.

Flex raiding, the concept of it is to include as many folks as possible, while still conforming to a structure of organized raiding.  It still requires the appropriate balance.  Blizzard has even suggested starting 10 man flex at 2-3 healers and adding an additional healer for every 5 you go up, so at 15, have 3-4, at 20 have 4-5, at 25 have 5-6.  Of course Flex Raiding is still very much in the testing phase but the idea would allow many casual guilds who have had to split up 25 man raiding into multiple 10 man teams, to perhaps build back up to a 25 by having everyone run together.

Now for the hardcore raiders, the ones racing to world first clears of a raid clear, they may see Flex Raiding as mandatory because it falls on a separate lockout than normal or heroic.  Many of the race to world first crew will do anything they can to guarantee they have the best gear possible and even have multiple alts geared and ready to go to switch in.  So some may feel this is something they must do, on top of LFR and their normal raiding, plus any gathering that may need to occur to be prepared with flasks and feasts.  So the chances for burnout are much higher with this crowd.

Also with Flex Raiding some may try to min-max what is the ideal number of people to beat the encounter, but honestly if this is something you are doing, Flex Raiding is not for you, its meant to feel more casual focused, which of course will bring out the, “OMG Blizzard is catering to casuals” crowd.  But think about it, most of their core audience are casual players, this is a business, and Blizzard is in the business to keep the majority of their paying subscribers happy.  This mode of raiding appeases to the casual groups who want the flexibility to include as many folks as possible without excluding others.

Flex Raiding in my opinion will allow causal raid focused guilds to have a valuable tool if needed to “Right Size” their raids on a week to week basis.  Some weeks maybe you have 17 folks show up, so run Flex raid, maybe the week after you have 20, so run 2 10 man normals if that’s your jam, but as you can see Flex Raiding does provide options.  Now the question is will the rewards be worth it, as its only on the PTR right now, only time will tell on that.

The dynamic scaling of raid content to fit the amount of people you want to raid with is an intriguing mechanic, that you can see in other uses via cloud computing, virtualization, etc.  Many organizations turn to cloud computing or virtualization because it lets them dynamically scale their services to meet a growing or retracting demand.  Flex Raiding does the same thing, and while the logistical nightmare of doing so is there to scale raid encounters on a wide range of folks, don’t be surprised if Flex Raiding becomes the only raiding option in the future.  Obviously for that to happen, Blizzard would need to try to take into account gaming of numbers, gear, difficulty per person added, etc.  But it does make developing content easier if there is a plug and play formula for scaling raids, vs. balancing 10 and 25 man.  Right now Blizzard has set themselves up to manage 4-6 different ways to raid (LFR, Flex, Normal 10, Normal 25, Heroic 10 and Heroic 25).  Streamlining raiding would assist greatly in development efforts, if they could make it work.

I am looking forward to this feature, as I know several other folks in casual raiding guilds are as well.  But it will all come down to how its implemented.

The whole purpose of this change is that, according to Blizzard, it will provide incentive for players to do 25 man raiding, but the question is will it truly bring back 25 man raiding to a level Blizzard is targeting?

Blizzard has stated that Thunderforged items will give raiders a reason for farming the same content over, in the hopes of getting even more upgrades, better upgrades.  And these Thunderforged items will have a much better chance to drop in 25 mans than in 10 mans.  With 10 mans rarely seeing them.  But that percent drop is important, and while Blizzard hasn’t come out and said what it is, it will still be subjected to RNG (Random Number Generation) that all loot in Warcraft adheres to.  So even if its say a 10% drop chance, you could potentially go 9 weeks in a row without ever seeing it.  As a way to combat bad luck, the game could provide the guild itself a stacking percent that each time a Thunderforged item doesn’t drop it provides a higher chance to drop one on the next boss, until finally one drops the buff resets.  Of course there is also the chance that the same Thunderforged item drops each time you kill a boss, also reducing the effectiveness of the system to urge more to do 25 mans, and instead just frustrate raiders who already struggle with how to cope and gear while at the mercy of the RNG loot system.

This also lends itself to the fact, that about raiders could hold out for the better item?  Many raiders use a DKP system that they would be hesitant to use on non-tier gear if there was a chance they could hold out and get something better, in this case, the Thunderforged version of it.  This argument I have seen thrown out a lot, however I don’t buy into it for the majority of folks.  Why?  Well many top tier raiding guilds use a Loot Council system, where in the interest of beating content faster they just assign loot to those who need it to help them progress faster.  Other guilds like mine, Phalanx of Nod, we use a modified version of Suicide Kings, where holding out, only helps you so much before you are dead even with everyone else anyway, so you are encouraged to take upgrades when you can get them.  However I can see this being an issue for some, especially as previously mentioned in guilds who are subject to a DKP system, where point hording is allowed.  Also, what about Thunderforged items creating an awkward situation for subbing in trial raiders or alts?  Will that not happen anymore unless someone who has the Thunderforged item already is willing to sit?

Thunderforged items also seem to be taking the place for Valor upgrades, with Blizzard saying they are removing the Valor upgrade vendor come patch 5.2, and aren’t sure if it will return in patch 5.3.  This takes gear upgrades out of the hands of players and puts it back into Blizzard’s control via RNG loot distribution.  Is there a better option than Thunderforged, items with a higher ilvl than existing items?  Perhaps, what about dropping a token instead that allows you to use the Valor upgrade vendor to upgrade any current tier item (excluding class tier pieces).  This would allow 25 man raiders a chance to upgrade their gear without spending valor points, and instead using their earned valor points to upgrade their other gear, and ultimately letting them gear up faster than 10 man teams.  Though if we don’t want to drop tokens, you could always drop gear that is already “pre-upgraded” but then you run into, what if you are dropping a piece that someone already has, with the token you provide more flexibility.

So back to the real question, will Thunderforged items help increase the popularity of 25 man raiding?  I personally think it won’t.  It doesn’t go far enough to provide true incentive.  Lets look at a few things I see as roadblocks to bringing back 25 man raids.

1. Decreased server populations.  Several servers are underpopulated, but many refuse to pay the transfer fee to move, and Blizzard isn’t planning any server consolidations.  Then you have these limited populations spread across several guilds, which brings me to my next point
2. Too many guilds.  Anyone can create a guild these days, and it spreads the population too thinly in many cases.  Leading some guilds to poach from one another (not a new problem).  Now I know some people are going to say, anyone has the right to make a guild.  I would argue they don’t, and I don’t personally like that its so easy to make one.  If Blizzard imposed caps to how many guilds could exist on a server, or even go as far as auto-disband guilds that don’t do anything with their members collectively, and not just raiding, but dungeons, pvp, etc.  This would make guilds work harder to do things as a guild or you need to go find a guild that is productive and does things with one another.

But lets say neither of the 2 points above come to pass.  What other incentive could Blizzard provide to spark more interest in 25 man raiding, without alienating 10 man raid teams?  Perhaps increase the valor points per kill, let 25 man raiders Valor cap just by raiding.  Allow each raid boss in 25 man mode to drop 10 lesser charms, that can be traded in to get the greater charms to improve your bonus loot rules, but let 10 mans maybe get 2-3 charms per kill.  Another item people have been dying for is a way to distinguish 25 man raids from 10 mans, you can do this by changing the gear, without actually changing the gear.  Let me explain, let 25 man bosses, drop bonus Transmog-gear.  This would be a way for raiders in 25 mans to customize their gear in a different way that doesn’t change the ilvl of gear or create a gear disparity between the two raiding options.  People love Transmog gear, and other than more art going into the game, it wouldn’t fundamentally change much.

In my opinion the winning formula to provide more incentive to 25 man raids is to do a combination of the following:

1. Higher percent chance to drop “gear upgrade tokens” in 25 man raids.  These are tokens that would upgrade your gear at the Valor upgrade vendor, without spending valor, allowing choice over which items to upgrade and when, works with existing gear drops, and lets 25 man raiders gear up faster than 10 man raids.
2. Drop Transmog gear in 25 man raids only.  Give 25 man raiders a way to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack.
3. Increase Valor point drops in 25 man raids, allow 25 man raiders to Valor cap, if they clear the current tier of raiding in a week.
4. Add Lesser Charms to both 25 man and 10 man raids, have lesser charms be higher in 25 man raids than 10 mans.

What do you think?  What are some other alternatives to the system Blizzard is looking to put in place?

8 years is a long time to be in the same guild, let alone lead one.  Like most guilds, mine has had its ups and downs.  The most important thing being the guild leader for the past 8 years was that its impossible to run a successful guild on your own.  You absolutely have to surround yourself with great officers who share your vision of the guild, but beyond that as the leader you need to delegate responsibility to those officers.  You also need to establish what your guild culture is going to be, then not compromise on that for anything.  That is who you are, and what a new recruit ultimately buys into.  Phalanx of Nod has developed the culture of that we are for adult gamers (18+), we raid but its not our job, we are here to have fun, enjoy the limited time many of us have to enjoy a game with great friends.  To this day we don’t stress over server firsts, if we get anything great on us, but ultimately we push ourselves at our own pace.  We have scheduled raid nights, we goof off during trash pulls, making fun of dumb things we tend to do, pull too many, life grip at the wrong time, etc.  When it comes to a progression boss we all get a bit more serious.  Once raid is done you can find our folks on our mumble server, trading recipes, talking about their day, or goofing off running some heroics.

Leading a guild for 8 years hasn’t always been easy.  Having to make tough calls about who to remove from the guild.  What direction to take the guild in terms of what content we focus on.  The one piece of advice I can give to any GM out there is to not make snap judgements.  Think through your decisions, bounce ideas always off of your officers, involve them.  Also don’t be afraid to ask your members either for their opinions on things, its always smart to know the pulse of the guild before making big and even small decisions.  I know I mentioned this earlier, but I can’t stress it enough, delegate to your officers.  If you don’t trust your officers to delegate items to them, then they shouldn’t be your officers.  When my wife gave birth to our daughter, I had to take a step away from the guild to focus on family, which in PoN we always tell our folks, family comes first, the guild can deal without you.  So I stepped away, but the guild continued to progress in raid content, they grew and they went on as normal, why?  Because of the fantastic officers in PoN, people who I trust implicitly with running the guild in my absence.

Over the past 8 years, we have made 2 trips to Blizzcon, 2 trips to MassiveLAN, countless other guild related get-togethers.  We have shared in our members graduating from college, getting married, having children, assisting those grieving over the loss of a loved one, provided career advice, played other games, chatted over IM during work hours, started epic twitter conversations that seemed to go nowhere except it made a person on the other side smile a bit more during a boring work day.  I like to say our guild is more than just some folks logging in to play a game together, we are a family, we look out for each other, and while dysfunctional at times, we all come back together to make it work.

On a personal level, I love my guild.  I truly do.  They have stood by me as I dated, as I got engaged, they supported me through career changes, my marriage, they gave me encouragement when I was sitting in the hospital waiting on the birth of my daughter.  They have supported me for 8 years, been more than just a place to play an online game, they have been true friends.  I am proud of the online community I helped start, but the members grew.

Happy 8th Anniversary to the members of Phalanx of Nod!

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Many folks are familiar with the Monk’s ability to increase leveling by 50% for an hour.  Its great, but that 1 hour buff goes away pretty quickly, at least you get it every day by doing a daily quest.  Now many folks like alts, but hate the idea of the long climb to the top starting from level 1.  It can be daunting and draining, when so much of the game is at max level.  So here is my solution.

An account wide buff, based on the amount of people you have at max level.  The more alts at max level the faster to level another alt.  Keep heirlooms, but take out the experience bonus, and let them scale up to level 90, so they are still useful.  An account wide buff, solves so many logistical issues with the heirloom system, but also provides some benefit or perk to leveling more and more alts.  Lets be honest, Blizzard wants to keep players playing, so to level more alts, give us a bone.

Lets work out a scenario.

• 1 Character at max level, will give your account a 20% increase for all experience gained until max level
• 2 Characters at max level, will give your account a 40% increase to all experience gained until max level
• 3 Characters at max level, will give your account a 60% increase to all experience gained until max level
• 4 Characters at max level, will give your account an 80% increase to all experience gained until max level
• 5 Characters at max level, will give your account a 100% increase to all experience gained until max level

Effectively giving you a boost upon each max level, but no longer having to worry about the gear or how other toons on different factions.  Now of course these numbers are just initial cuts and maybe you start higher, maybe you can go beyond 100%.  I like leveling my other characters, but the grind makes me think why am I repeating this content over and over, what is the benefit?  Now some folks love to level at a normal pace, for them give them the ability to turn off this buff if they don’t want it.  Perhaps you only get the buff after having 2 alts at max level?  Maybe after getting 10 alts to max level you can auto-level 1 character to the previous expansions max level then you apply the previous buff to continue leveling.  There are so many little things that are absolutely feasible with the current technology that Blizzard is incorporating today.

Just an idea to solve the alt grind and how to fix heirlooms, what are your thoughts?

Also as a member of a guild its important to work together in order to assist each other to get the items you all need to be successful in Mists of Pandaria, especially if you are a member of a raiding guild.

Keep reading to find out the 5 things you should be doing once you hit 90.

1.  Normal Dungeons

There are a few dungeons you can run at level 85 that are not heroic that will help boost your item level.  Focus on Mogu’shan Palace and Shado-Pan Monastary.  While nothing earth shattering it will help you get some 450 and 435 gear which is needed to run heroic dungeons.  You will require an item level of 440 to begin heroics.  With some of these gear drops it will help you get on your way to running heroics.

2. Scenarios

Scenarios are a great way to get a chance at some item level 463 gear.  Granted there is no guarantee, at the end of each scenario you will get some gear, a chance at some heroic level gear that is suitable for your spec, is quite good.  Scenarios are quick instanced group quests that typically last between 10-20 minutes, that don’t require specific roles to complete though having a healer is sometimes very beneficial.  Running random ones will earn you valor points as well.  I highly recommend running the Proving Grounds scenario early on, as it is the only one with a quest that will earn you an ilvl 450 weapon.  So that is at least one guaranteed ilvl 450 item that will help you get up to the required ilvl 440 for heroics.

As of release, there are 8 scenarios available per faction

1. A Brewing Storm
2. Brewmoon Festival
3. Crypt of Forgotten Kings
4. Alliance: Dustwallow Marsh | Horde: Dustwallow Marsh
5. Kun-Lai Summit
6. Proving Grounds
7. The Jade Forest
8. Unga Ingoo

3. Daily Quests – Golden Lotus, Klaxxi

The Klaxxi and Golden Lotus are two of the main factions you will start to run dailies for.  The Klaxxi you will open by questing in the Dread Wastes.  The Golden Lotus open after you talk with Anduin and finish the trials at the Temple of the White Tiger in Kun-Lai Summit, the quest chain begins by getting a quest called Temple of the White Tiger.  This will eventually lead to opening the gates to the Vale of Eternal Blossoms and ultimately the quest hub for the Golden Lotus.  At honored with the Klaxxi you can purchase an epic neck with an item level of 489.  The Golden Lotus at honored you can get ilvl 489 rings.  These items can be purchased for valor points.  You must get to revered with the Golden Lotus to open up the Shado-Pan and August Celestials factions.  Many folks joke about the amount of dailies in Mists of Pandaria, but if you focus on these two factions the gear will come faster.

Dailies in Mists of Pandaria are a lot like eating an elephant, trying to eat the whole thing at once will just make you sick.  So I suggest doing it one bite at a time.  If your goal is to raid, these two factions’ dailies are the best way to start.  The nice thing about daily quests is that you can earn valor points to help you get closer to the higher level gear.

4. Heroics

Once you reach an equipped item level of 440, you can begin to queue up for heroic dungeons.  Yyou will earn justice points for boss kills, also running random heroics will net you valor points.  The gear that drops here is item level 463.  So this is where you will spend a good portion of your time until you get an average item level of 460.  There are currently 9 total heroic dungeons you can run to gear up your toon.  These are:

1. Gate of the Setting Sun
2. Mogu’Shan Palace
3. Scarlet Halls
4. Scarlet Monastery
5. Scholomance
6. Shado-Pan Monastery
7. Siege of Niuzao Temple
8. Stormstout Brewery
9. Temple of the Jade Serpent

5. LFR

LFR makes a return but gone are these being pushover fights, you will need to have an equipped ilvl of 460 to enter the first LFR, which is Mogu’Shan Vaults.  The next LFR encounter will be Heart of Fear, followed by Terrace of Endless Spring.  Please note you will need to finish Mogu’Shan Vaults before you can enter Heart of Fear and you need to clear Heart of Fear before moving onto Terrace of Endless Spring.  The LFR runs are easier than normal but some fights still can pose a challenge that may require a bit more communication., than many were used to in the Dragon Soul LFR.  Here is where you will see simplified versions of the normal mode raid bosses, and will drop item level 476 gear.  All of this will get you a bit closer to being even better prepared to raid the normal modes.  Granted its not necessary to run LFR to raid normal mode, but it certainly gives you a leg up.

Gear drops in LFR are rolled in the background, and there is a chance loot will drop for you based on your spec.  Gone are the days of people rolling on gear and trading it to their friends, instead you roll against the computer and gamble with the RNG gods.

Conclusion

With these 5 things you should be well on your way to handle later content of Mists of Pandaria.  In the end being raid ready and ready to help your guild be raid ready are important by and following the above items, you are doing just that.  There are a ton of other things to do besides these 5, Blizzard gave us more stuff to do at max level than ever before, but these five items will put you on the right path to get into raiding content.

Were Orges ever thought of as a playalbe race, at one time?

GhostCrawler: Yep. We considered them for Cataclysm instead of goblins. Figuring out the females and the two-headed mages would be (fun!) challenges. Maybe someday.

Ogres would be a great race, but since goblins were used instead, the question now comes down to who else would we get, I know people would love to have Naga as a playable race.  I would think Naga would be more Horde at this point, pretty sure the Night Elves wouldn’t want anything to do with them, leaving the Ogres to be Alliance.

Is there any plans to allow players to have more then one Death Knight per server?

GhostCrawler: We agree that it feels like an antiquated rule at this point. We’ll see how hard it is to remove that restriction.

If this is the case, I wonder if we would also see perhaps allowing people to create “almost” max level characters?  they had this feature for testing purposes in MoP beta, so its not too far fetched to say, that if a person has say 3 chars at max level, maybe they can create a max level alt, where the max level for them is from the previous expansion, so if you are playing MoP, you create an alt Hunter, it can be level 85, assuming you already have 3 chars at max level.  Just a thought.

What  exactly (If you can answer without spoiling the story line!) has turned Garrosh Hellscream into the monster we all hate now?

Dave Kosak: Garrosh is not a monster. He has a very clear vision of the Horde, and the future of the orcs, and he gives very little thought to anyone who stands between him and that future. As he gets more powerful, and gets away with more, his vision becomes clearer. This has put him in conflict in the Alliance, and ultimately will cause problems within the Horde.

So Garrosh is just an ass, he isn’t being tainted by fel energy like others are saying he is just a warmonger.  Put away the tinfoil hats people, some orcs just want to watch the world burn.

Will there be an appearance of the Burning Legion in the end of MoP?

Dave Kosak: The threat of the Burning Legion is still out there, and it’s very much a threat to Azeroth. The mortal races are mostly focused on the current war, but not everyone has forgotten about what’s out there and the challenges to come… Wrathion, in particular, is already trying to look ahead.

OK now you can break out the tinfoil hats, so thats not a yes, but not a no.  So Wrathion is going to be looking ahead at the Burning Legion, so possible next expansion we see them, and Wrathion’s story helps to bring us up to that story of re-engaging with them?  Seems like a strong possibility.

Where is N’Zoth? He was mentioned at Blizzcon, then was talked about in Dragon Soul. What is going on with him?!

Dave Kosak: N’zoth is still lurking. The Titans couldn’t defeat it… maybe someday we’ll get our chance? Don’t expect to hear anything about him in Pandaria, though!

So possible, old god & burning legion expansion for after Mists.  OK I can get behind that.

When will we see Sargeras?

Dave Kosak: Sargeras would be one monstrous raid boss! He’s one of the most iconic, key villains of the franchise. Believe me, when he comes to Azeroth, you’re going to feel it LONG before he even gets there.

So Wrathion is looking ahead to the Burning Legion (possibly), sounds like we will see them in maybe a next expansion, so Sargeras coming to Azeroth would be right in line there.  I’ll buy it, Sargeras final bad guy in the expansion after Mists of Pandaria.

I am wondering about the incentives to 25 man raiding. This game is a social game so why does it seem that 25 man guilds are dying off and raids are going down to 10 mans. Paragon recently posted that they were going to 10 man. Is there any other way to fix it so that people are drawn to do 25 mans because they want to raid with friends and get the good gear?

IonHazzikostas: In Paragon’s specific case, I suspect they’d find no lack of capable people more than willing to raid with them, but maintaining a Finnish-speaking roster is a core part of their guild culture, and they’ve made what was no doubt a very difficult decision to scale down to 10-player raiding rather than compromise that culture. As I noted in the Reddit AMA, ultimately there are heavier logistical burdens, particularly placed on the officers and raid leaders, in sustaining a 25-player roster versus only needing 10 players. We’re actively discussing ways of ensuring that 25-player raiders feel properly incentivized and rewarded without necessarily elevating one raid size over the other. We definitely welcome ongoing community discussion and feedback on that topic.

Greg just said on twitter that the 25s versus 10s situation was handled in the AMA a lot, but nothing came from that apart from an understanding that 25s do have it harder now and could use some more compensation, Don’t you have concrete plans for that, more than the tiny bit of extra loot 25s will have? The issue will only get even more pronounced the next weeks during progression.

Ion Hazzikostas: It’s something we discuss frequently internally. We don’t have anything final to announce just yet, but we love 25-player raiding and intend to do what we can to preserve it.

Nobody I know is impressed with the promise of an extra piece of loot for normal 25 mans. What we would be impressed with is separate realm first achievements for each raid format. Any chance of seeing something like this?

Ion Hazzikostas: To Guest-261 Possibly. On several servers that have one top 25-player guild that’s far above the rest of the server in progression, that might turn into incentivizing them to split up the week after their 25-player Realm First to snag the 10-player one. Not sure that’s great gameplay for anyone. That said, we recognize that there’s interest in making it a bit easier to distinguish between 10-player and 25-player kills in statistics or achievements.

Ok, I am going to be the one to ask the dreaded question, mainly because my guild members know that I continue to fight for them and have asked me to still chase this question. 25 mans – GC you have said it would be a good topic for a Watercooler, which is good, and recent tweets say not enough is being done for them.The only change we know about is the loot change and that is onl 1 item different for Normals from the majority of Cata which, excuse the sentiment here, seems a little underwhelmin…

GhostCrawler: Sadly, we don’t have any details to announce yet, but we have a couple of ideas that should make the 25 players happy. We’ll talk about them when we’re confident that they are good ideas. Remember, the result can’t be that all the 10 players stampede back to 25.

OK so Blizzard knows incentivizing 25s needs to happen, maybe even distinguishing them a bit more from 10s, without killing off 10s.  These responses won’t make anyone in the 25 player raiding community happy I don’t think, as they have no answer.  Personally for me, I just like being able to scale up or down for my guild depending on the attendance without having to start from scratch each time we do so.

Any chance we will see the option to upgrade out current legendary to be maybe not the equal to the current ilvl but maybe raid finder ilvl or just a little below so that they are not just taking up space in out banks, or bags in the case of Dragonwrath.

GhostCrawler: Not sure we would let you upgrade a legendary, but we could potentially allow you to transmog them. Our reluctance has always been that Thunderfuy feels less special when you see 30 of them running around AV.

Legendary Transmogrification is still on the table, not there yet, but at least its still on the table for Blizzard.  This would make a lot of people with legendaries very  happy.

Will you guys decrease the experience needed from 88-89 and 89-90 or increase the experience gained in Townlong Steppes and Dread Wastes before release? At the moment you can NOT hit Level 89 if you start with Level 88 and 0% experience in Townlong Steppes (~10% experience missing) and also Level 90 is impossible with Dread Wastes quests only (~5% experience missing). These are datas with the 10% experience guild perk and yes, I’ve got both zone completed achievements.

Cory Stockton: We are still actively tuning the XP. We will look into it.

I sure hope they do, this seems a bit broken, especially less than a week before Mists of Pandaria hits, change those numbers Blizz, some of us have a race to 90 to get involved in!

It seems like PVP never gets much attention from the devlopers during these type of events. As a hardcore lover of PVP and the many people that are in my guild, we have really gotten frustrated, bored, etc with how PVP is handled. Will you guys ever be implanting anything like how LFR system works. Were there will be healers on each side, for a better chance of your team succeeding? I don’t know about anyone else but I really hate being on my side with 0 healers and the horde have 4 in E…

Greg Street: Our BG queueing system was built a long time ago. Since that time we’ve engineered the much more powerful system that we use for Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder. We’d now like to reengineer that system to work for BG queues as well, which would give us the ability to better balance healers, item levels, and perhaps even premade vs. PUG. No promises, but it’s something we’re working on.

Improved battleground queue system in the works, I may actually want to PUG into battlegrounds again.  Though one of the last times I was in there with my holy paladin, I was told healing was worthless in battlegrounds, which just caused a facepalm moment for me.  But I am looking forward to this change whenever it happens, I think it would be great to balance out some Battlegrounds to some extent.

Have you thought about implementing zones or battlegrounds where players are normalized by level, similar to the gear level normalization in the upcoming challenge mode dungeons? This could allow players to quest or PVP with lower-level friends, and it could be fun to see a trio of level 20s take down a level 90.

Dave Kosak: This is a tremendous question, because it’s something we’ve been talking about and exploring. With Challenge Modes, we now have tech to scale your item level, so that we can guarantee the right level of difficulty. Having this tech opens lots of doors for us down the line. We don’t have anything to announce, but it’s a step toward a lot of the features you’re describing.

This is interesting, making things even more even and focus purely on skill for PVP.  This could be interesting, however you of course will have some folks say then what is the point in grinding out better gear.  Depending on how this is implemented it could be good or bad.  Limit it to tournaments or challenge brackets and I think it would go over pretty well.

The Theramore event was a little…underwhelming. Developers have previously stated they spent more time on the content in Pandaria than the Theramore event. Will we see more diversity and excitement in the scenarios in Pandaria?

Dave Kosak: There’s a LOT of diversity in the scenarios. For example. there’s a monkey pirate island where you’re running around fetching up brew and fighting randomized bosses, and other insanity. We really tried to experiement with some different mechanics, and we got bolder as development continued.

No, they are going to make them all boring as crap!  Who lets these people ask the questions, can we get a better filter next time.  Of course there is going to be diversity in scenarios, I mean Monkey Pirate Island, that sounds awesome!  Lets do it!  Monkey Pirates, thats about as diverse as you come.

The story of Tides of War is really interesting. I don’t think players can get engaged if they have no idea what’s happening though–the bomb dropping is really anticlimactic. I felt a bit disappointed that so little got included in the scenario. Was this because of lack of time of developers, or because you rather keep all that info in the novels.

DaveKosak: I’ve been watching the Theramore feedback closely, and this comment seems pretty universal. We tried to keep everything all in the scenario, to make it really self-contained, but not burden it with lots of story that you have to slog through every time you played the scenario. It’s pretty clear from the feedback that people wanted more story. We should’ve surrounded the scenarios with more quests or explanations to help round out the story for the people who wanted to know what exactly was happening. Lesson learned!

Are we going to get more story-telling in scenarios? The Theramore scenario was lackluster compared to the book and key story elements haven’t even been address in-game yet.(Kirin Tor leader)

Dave Kosak: I addressed this earlier, but keep in mind that we want scenarios to be replayable. We definitely didn’t want to burden them with tons of story that you have to wade through every time you play it. As I said for Theramore, people obviously wanted more context, which probably was best served by some one-time quests on either end of the scenario. That’s a lesson we’re pulling forward.

OK so Blizzard learned from the mistake with Theramore that they needed maybe some lead in quests, more story around why we are even doing this.  Going forward it sounds like they are taking care of that.  Of course I am sure that won’t stop the whining right now, but glad to see Blizzard owned up to the lack of story around the scenario itself and is addressing it for future scenario content, hopefully that also means existing scenarios that are launching with MoP on the 25th.

Are we going to have the ability to remove players who dc or log off from scenario groups and add in new players from the queue?

Cory Stockton: Not at launch but we hope to have it in for the 5.1 patch. We understand the concern.

Well this could be problematic, you queue up for a Scenario, I assume it will be somewhat challenging at first when you hit 90, someone disconnects and you can’t requeue?  Hopefully there is no deserter debuff.

Compared to designing dungeons, how difficult is it to design scenarios? Does it take more or less resources to make scenarios?

GhostCrawler: The biggest challenge for us was just figuring out what scenarios should be. How long should they last? Should they be hard? How much variability should they have from run to run? Now that we’ve gone through that process, they should take much less time to design than dungeons. The biggest time expenditure on dungeons is the amazing art that goes into them.

So what I am reading here, is there is a pretty good chance that Blizzard can churn out scenarios faster than dungeons.  This is potentially a huge deal considering we have gone 9 months without any new content in Cataclysm, so churning out a few scenarios between large patches could help satiate the community.

When will transmog rules be loosened up a little? Main hand/one hand weapons, for instance.

GhostCrawler: If I had to guess, we will loosen them at some point. We would probably wait until some time after the MoP launch when players will appreciate it more. It’s easy for smaller features to get lost when there is so much new content. The designers will discuss it soon ™.

Well this is good news, I have some awesome models of axes or maces I would love to use but have to use a sword for a sword is kind of disappointing.  Loosening the rules would allow players to customize their look even further, if hunters can do it, we should be allowed to.

With the creation of the farms at Halfhill, the base structure for player and guild housing has subsequently been created as well. Is this the direction you have chosen to go with for player housing or was this even considered as an option? One very good point about this option is that multiple locations for housing can be placed throughout the game world, preventing the issue of removing players from the world.

Cory Stockton: It’s certainly a baby step in that direction. We are really excited to see how players react to it in Mists. We already have lots of ideas on how we can expand this kind of content in the future too!

Dave Kosak: Regarding DeathFish’s question (Love the name, Deathfish!) when we think about things like player-housing, we really want to look at how this can contribute to gameplay. The farm is awesome because it ties into a lot of systems, it creates some fun crafting opportunities, it impacts the economy, etc. It’s a great experiment for us because if it’s popular, it gives us a lot of data into how to create this type of content in the future.

Before everyone freaks out over player housing.  Lets focus on the word Cory used, “baby step”.  This isn’t a move in the direction housing for players, its simply a piece of technology they can use to maybe one day, if they feel like it, and the stars align, and they can afford to not create dungeons, scenarios and raids to work on it.  Don’t expect player housing anytime soon, but if you are gung ho about player housing you better use this new tech, else they will see it as players’ disinterest and they won’t pursue it at all, and by pursue I mean they won’t have high level discussions about it.

Would say that the new challenge mode dungeon gold times are going to be the “Gladiator” equivalent of PVE?

Ion Hazzikostas: That would be our hope. Seeing someone sporting a set of challenge mode armor in town should be akin to seeing someone on a Gladiator mount — you know they did something extremely skillful to earn it, and it’s not the sort of reward you can outgear and obtain later on.

Cory Stockton: That’s probably a pretty close comparison. Beyond gold times we will have server and guild leaderboards too. That’s probably where the highest level of competition will be.

Server leaderboards are awesome, Guild leaderboards are tremendous!  Being able to size up folks in your guild, love the competition aspect of it.  I am really digging it.  My guild in particular will look at achievement point ladder in our guild, and it gets competitive at times.  This will continue to promote that amongst my guildies.

In Pandaria, will we see another 9 month period without new content?

Cory Stockton: We are doing everything within our power to avoid this. We all feel that 9 months without content is pretty much unacceptable to our players. A glimmer of hope: we are already knee deep into both patch 5.1 and 5.2. Our plan is to deliver these much faster than anyone is expecting.

I am not so much worried about the time between patch 5.0.5, 5.1 and 5.2 its really the time between 5.2 and 6.0.  Thats where the time always drags out, it was like that from Wrath to Cataclysm, then from Cataclysm to MoP.  I honestly do not see a concern around wait times for content patches during the expansion its when those are done and we are waiting for the next expansion is the real issue.

Question from Munich, Germany. As the Octoberfest here and Brewfest in WoW are coming up, I wondered whether anyone at Blizzard did “field research” for designing Brewfest at the real Octoberfest ? The costumes and music are done really well.

Cory Stockton: We do field research on Brewfest every Friday.

Well its official we drive the Blizzard developers to drink, I hope you are all proud of yourselves.

I assume I ask this question on behalf of thousands of vanilla WoW fans: Do you ever plan on bringing back “Server-wide” Events? An example would be the Opening of AQ, which allowed the entire server to collaborate their efforts. An event of the same theory would be an incredible experience for all players to witness. It was incredibly rewarding when the whole server gathered enough materials for the opening ceremony!

Dave Kosak: From the standpoint of, “Everyone gather at the same place at the same time to see a big event and if you miss it its gone forever assuming you all don’t crash the server,” then no, no more events like that. BUT, we love the feeling of server progression, similar to the Isle of Quel’denas. Is there a way to build that progression into the game such that players who come in a couple months later don’t miss out on all the fun? We think there is. And we’re planning something that we’d like to try in the 5.0 patch cycle… so stay tuned! [No guarantees here, but we're actively tinkering with something.]

Interesting, a potential server-wide event, that won’t require everyone to be in the same place like the gates of AQ.  Obviously they have said no guarantees, but I personally loved seeing how my server stacked up with others, and seeing the whole community work together.  Very much looking forward to whatever Blizzard has planned for us.

So there you have it, thats what I think on some of the most interesting items that were brought up in the recent Blizzard DEV Q&A, what are your thoughts on these?

Full Q&A located here

First lets explore what a Scenario is.  A Scenario is an instanced group quest.  You are given objectives to complete (quests), that eventually lead to the conclusion.  Scenarios should take a group anywhere from 10-30 minutes, depending on skill, gear level, etc.  You can do them with any class makeup, you do not need a tank or healer, though they can make things easier.  Keep in mind they are quests that tell a story, for those players who have been playing since back in the day, then you remember group quests.  Quests where you need a few folks to get them completed because you were going up against elite mobs in most cases.

Now lets review over the two points above of what this specific Scenario was supposed to accomplish.

First lets look a giving players something new to do before Mists of Pandaria and introducing the concept of Scenarios to the WoW community.  This particular Scenario first off I feel came too late, but I can also argue that it came right on time.  Let me explain.  First off the WoW community has been begging for new content for a while now, so with just a week left to go this content has come way late in satiating the players.  However a Scenario is just a series of quests done in a small group of 3 players.  Doing this over and over for a month before launch, even 2 weeks before launch would get old pretty quick.  From showing players what a scenario is I think Blizzard succeeded.  As for giving the player base content to do before launch, while they did that, I felt it came too late.  They needed something else to supplement the scenario, perhaps giving early access to those who pre-ordered MoP to pet battles is just one idea.

Secondly the goal of the Theramore’s Fall Scenario is to heighten the tensions between Horde and Alliance in preparation for a final showdown with Garrosh in Mists of Pandaria.  Also Blizzard wanted to help tie in Cataclysm into Mists of Pandaria.  For heightening tensions I think Blizzard succeeded.  All over social media, especially Twitter, I have seen some heated discussions between Horde and Alliance players over the outcome of Theramore.  So in that regard, Blizzard succeeded in bringing some of the war back to World of Warcraft, stirring up the natives if you will.  However there is definitely a lack of tie-in with the upcoming continent of Pandaria.  Sure there are pandaren in the cities, but why are they there, where is the lead in?  Where is the tie in?  Sure folks will say that happens when you initially go to Pandaria, but I feel like its a bit disconnected at the moment.  Some kind of world event or quests even could have tied it all together a bit more.

I feel that the Scenario concept itself is a success, any class makeup, short, tells a story, linear path of group quests, instanced.  All those things felt good.  As a tie-in to Mists of Pandaria is where I feel this “pre-launch” content fell down.  I liked the Scenario personally, I will keep running it too, I do wish Blizzard implemented something else to tie in Pandarens.  What did you think?

Also big thanks to Jasyla from Cannotbetamed.com for helping find some of these as well!

Death Knights

• Blood
  • Variant Avatar Blood guide
• Frost
• Unholy
  • Variant Avatar Unholy guide

Druids

• Feral
  • Fluid Druid Feral Changes in 5.0
• Guardian
  • The Inconspicuous Bear Guardian guide
  • MMO Melting Pot Guardian guide
  • Fluid Druid Guardian Guide for 5.0
• Moonkin
  • Restokin’s Moonkin guide
• Resto
  • Cannot Be Tamed guide
  • Falling Leaves & Wings guide

Hunters

• Marks 365 guide

Mages

• WoW Insider: Mage Talent Guide
• WoW Insider: Mage Glyph guide
• WoW Insider: Mage Spell rotation guide

Monks

Paladins

• Holy
  • Healbot.net’s How to Holy Paladin in 5.0
  • Kurn’s Corner – 5.0 Holy Pally changes
  • Blessing of Kings’s Holy Changes in 5.0 Part 1 & Part 2
  • Bossy Pally – MoP Pre-Raid Holy Paladin Shopping List
• Prot
  • MMO Melting Pot Quick Start Guide
  • WoW Insider Overview
  • Sacred Duty 5.0.4 Primer
• Ret
  • WoW Insider Ret Pally Overview

Priests

• General
  • Tales of a Priest: Holy & Disc Priest Resources
• Disc
  • Heal Meh: Disc Healing in 5.0.4
• Holy
  • World of Matticus – Holy and Disc Healing in 5.0.4
  • Tales of a Priest – Holy MoP Guide
• Shadow
  • Bible of Dreams – Shadow Priest Talents
  • Shard’s Thoughts – Shadow Priest 5.0.4
  • How to Priest – Shadow Priest gear guide

Rogues

• WoW Insider Article
• Assassination Guide at Tikari.net
• Combat Guide by Sinnabun
• Rogue Glyphs by PVERogues
• Playing a Rogue by Forever a Noob

Shaman

• Elemental
  • Totem Spot’s Elemental Primer
• Enhancement
  • WoW Insider Overview / guide
  • Totem Spot’s Enhancement Primer
• Resto
  • Water Bender, Mist Weaver Resto Talents
  • Healbot.net – How to Resto in 5.0

Warlocks

• WoW Insider Lock Overview
• Spellbound’s Warlock Changes
• WoW Insider – Playing an 85 Lock with MoP mechanics

Warriors

• Arms
  • WoW Insider Arms Overview
• Fury
  • WoW Insider Fury Overview
• Prot
  • MMO Melting Pot Prot Warrior Quick Start
  • WoW Insider Prot guide
  • Elemental Entropy’s Prot Warrior Changes

If you have any blogs out there that you feel should be listed, link them in the comments or send me an email at variantavatar@gmail.com

Talents

Tier 1.  Plague Leech is really the only single target talent here, the other two, Roiling Blood and Unholy Blight both are mostly for AoE situations.  Most of the time especially for leveling you will be dealing with single target mobs, so go with Plague Leech.  If you plan on doing a lot of AoE encounters, or AoE grinding, either Roiling Blood or Unholy Blight depending on your playstyle may suit you better.  Most likely I will grab Roiling Blood for leveling, but for dungeons & raids I will stick mostly with Plague Leech.

Tier 2.  Your 2 main choices here will be Lichborne or Anti-Magic Zone.  Lichborne will let you heal yourself with Death Coil, while Anti-Magic zone will let you place a bubble to protect folks from incoming magic damage.  Personally I will be switching it up depending on the encounter, but for leveling I will definitely be going with Lichborne.  For fights I know will be heavy with AoE spell damage I may switch over the Anti-Magic Zone.  Lichborne will be my baseline.

Tier 3.  To me the most obvious choice is Death’s Advance, faster movement speed just seems like a no brainer especially on many fights where you need to switch targets or move quickly out of the bad.  The other options I don’t see much PVE use out of.

Tier 4.  Lets look at some of these choices.  First Death Siphon sounds good, but it uses a death rune, thus directly competing with Scourge Strike.  Conversion sounds good but uses your valuable runic power, which is harder to come by in 5.0.4.  So just like with the blood build, the no brainer choice seems to be Death Pact which is what I will be going with.  Just make sure to time it during a point where you can bring your ghoul back to life if necessary, since your pet is such a large part of your DPS.

Tier 5.  After trying out all three options in this tier, I prefer Runic Corruption over all others.  This just seems to flow better with the Unholy DK rotation than the other two, a 45% chance at improving rune regeneration plays well with our diseases and keeping up death runes for Scourge Strike.

Tier 6.  This is mostly a PVP tier, so go with what works with your personal playstyle, I will probably go with Gorefiend’s Grasp as I can think of more scenarios that will be viable, for example pulling enemy mobs off of the squishy targets so a tank can pick them up.

Glyphs

For your major glyphs there seems to be one guaranteed glyph, the other 2 spots are up to the individual amongst three viable glyphs, in my honest opinion.  Glyph of Unholy Frenzy deserves a spot on the glyph wheel, all the glory none of the damage.  There is nothing but benefit here.  The next two glyph spots can be filled with any of the following three glyphs:

• Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell – Improves Survivability, by slightly increasing the amount of spell damage your AMS can absorb.
• Glyph of Death Coil – Lets you heal allies with your death coil, so survivability for others
• Glyph of Death and Decay – Lets you slow down enemies who enter your DnD, good for leveling in my opinion, past that it may not get much use outside of PVP.

This will be my spec once 5.0.4 goes live, my baseline, as mentioned I will be moving some stuff around based on the situation & encounter.

http://mop.wowhead.com/mists-of-pandaria-talent-calculator#kyEL|0zhc0s

Spells & Abilities

First off, let me brace everyone for the largest change, Unholy no longer has 3 diseases.  Ebon Plaguebringer was revamped to a passive specialization for Unholy DKs.  Many people who have read my blog know that this ability made us great in the past, it truly differentiated us and brought something very valuable to the table.  This ability now provides the Physical Vulnerability debuff on the target which increases physical damage taken by 4% over 30 seconds.  Also Ebon Plaguebringer no longer increases magical damage done on a target.  No worries, though EP still improves disease damage, and our Scourge Strike ability was scaled to reflect this change of only having two diseases up, so don’t worry there.

The newest ability in our arsenal is Soul Reaper.  This ability is by its definition a finisher and will be used on enemies at or below 35% health, and moves to the top of our priority list once a mob is below 35%.  Beyond this change, our rotation and spell priority is largely untouched from 4.3.

Please note that Unholy DKs should use the Unholy Presence.

Single Target Priority

1. Get Your Diseases Up! – Use Outbreak to apply, and use it to reapply when its not on cooldown
2. Dark Transformation
3. Soul Reaper (if target is at or below 35% health, also not available until 87)
4. Death and Decay/Scourge Strike (If Both Unholy Runes or Death Runes are up)
5. Festering Strike (If Both Blood Runes AND Both Frost Runes are up)
6. Death Coil (If Sudden Doom Procs or your Runic Power is high)
7. Death and Decay / Scourge Strike > Festering Strike > Horn of Winter

Multiple Target Priority

1. Get those diseases up, then hit Pestilence, hit Blood Boil if you took the Roiling Blood Talent
2. Dark Transformation
3. Death and Decay/Scourge Strike (If Both Unholy Runes or Death Runes are up)
4. Blood Boil (If Both Blood Runes AND Both Frost Runes are up)
5. Death Coil (If Sudden Doom Procs or your Runic Power is high)
6. Icy Touch (Burn those unused Frost Runes)

DPS Cooldowns

1. Empower Rune Weapon

The ability to activate all your runes can be very powerful in the right circumstances.  Where I like to use this is once I hit 2 Festering Strikes, thus turning both sets of my blood and frost runes into death runes, and both my unholy runes are down.  This lets me cast 6 Scourge Strikes in quick succession after hitting Empower Rune Weapon.  When would you do such a thing, well you need to time this up with a Heroism or Bloodlust AND after you blow through your runic power on Gargoyle and Death Coils to activate Dark Transformation (if available).

2. Army of the Dead

This is a channeled spell so its best used before a boss fight starts.  If you aren’t able to cast it before the fight starts you want to try and cast it during phase transitions to limit your DPS downtime.  Remember while channeling the spell you do no DPS.  Also fear not the ghouls will only taunt adds and not bosses.  The summoned ghouls will taunt non-boss mobs, so be careful and mindful when using this, unless you glyphed to remove the taunt component of the spell.

3. Gargoyle

This spell will eat up 60 of your runic power and will take a snapshot of your Attack Power and Haste at the moment it was cast.  So its best to time this up with a heroism / bloodlust.  Know when that will happen because you will want to make sure you have the 60 runic power to cast this.

4. Unholy Frenzy

This grants 20% melee haste for 30 seconds.  Awesome stuff especially when used with Gargoyle.  However this does not stack with heroism or bloodlust, so use before or immediately after.  Also this will cause you to take damage if you don’t glyph to remove the damage component, so be mindful of that especially of incoming damage during particular boss fights where there can be a lot of incoming damage.  Use this early in a fight if you plan to use heroism / bloodlust near the end or vice versa.  This ability should in most cases be used in conjunction with Gargoyle to gain maximum benefit.

5. Anti-Magic Shell

Pop AMS during periods of spell damage in order to absorb that damage and convert it into Runic Power.  You want to use this as much as possible during times when you are about to take magic damage.  This will obviously provide you with more runic power to start dumping into death coil and ultimately getting Dark Transformation ready to go as well.  So before you use this, make sure you empty most of your runic power as to not let the RP you generate from using AMS to go to waste.

Stats

Your stat priority doesn’t appear to change much in 5.0.4, early results on many sites indicate you will have the following priority at max level:

1. Strength
2. Hit to Cap (7.5%) / Expertise to Cap (7.5%)
3. Haste
4. Critical Strike
5. Mastery
6. Attack Power

For runeforging, stick with Fallen Crusader

Conclusion

A few of our staples have changed, Ebon Plaguebringer, but we got a new tool in Soul Reaper.  The end of the day, not much has really changed for us.  Your rotation is largely unchanged, your stat priority is largely unchanged.  You will notice you generate less runic power than before, that’s normal unfortunately but be mindful of it, and maximize the use of your other abilities.  I am sure we will see additional changes down the line, but this how I am getting started.

Talents

First thing you are going to notice is the tier / choose your own adventure talent system we get with 5.0.4.

Tier 1.  The choice for me is going to be Plague Leech, let me caveat that with most of the time.  When you are dealing with a lot of multi-target tanking, Roiling Blood will be your secondary choice to help keep spreading your diseases quickly, since you will be using Blood Boil a good bit, more on that in a bit.

Tier 2.  It would seem that Purgatory is the obvious choice, the problem I have with it is the unpredictability of living after it even when its used.  So if an attack would kill you, a protective bubble with the overkill damage is put on you, it needs to be healed off of you within 3 seconds, I don’t like those odds, and I have a lot of faith in my healers, but its just not my cup of tea, so I will be passing on Purgatory and looking at the tried and true Lichborne.  Healing yourself with death coil to help out the healers is always a great panic button and you know what you are getting because you control it.  I like active tanking choices rather than passive so this wins out.  Anti Magic Zone is a solid choice if you know you will be able to protect raid members from spell damage.  So this one will be more situational.

Tier 3.  For me, as a tank being able to close ground on an enemy, or being able to kite a mob around quickly, means a lot for survivability.  So I am going to focus on Death’s Advance.  A passive 10% movement speed increase, and on click, boosting that to 30% will allow you to really move to get the adds and potentially make kiting easier.  For me Asphyxiate is interesting in situational events where you need an extra stun, as it replaces Strangulate, adds the stun, and silences if stun is not possible.  It also reduces the cooldown to 1 minute.  But at the end of the day unless you need to have some additional mob control, I would stick with Death’s Advance.

Tier 4.  This can be described as your self healing tier.  Now there are 2 main options.  The first is Death Siphon.  On the surface it looks good, but it uses a death rune, which you want to use your death runes for Death Strike.  So this option seems like a poor decision.  Which leaves you with really only one viable option in Death Pact, stealing your minion’s health to heal yourself seems like a nice save me button, if you macro them together (summon, death pact).

Tier 5.  In this tier we will have several choices for rune regeneration.  A lot of this will come down to playstyle.  Though Runic Empowerment and Runic Corruption are the two main choices.  Runic Empowerment has nearly a 50% chance to regenerate a fully depleted rune.  For me this is the option I am going to go with, as in theory, it means that almost every other rune strike will restore a depleted rune.  Since there is no glyph that increases your Death Strike based on how much runic power you have, there is no need to horde it like pre-5.0.

Tier 6.  These talents won’t be available until you hit level 90.  They are mostly PVP related talents, but Gorefiend’s Grasp is the talent that I think would be best used for tanking, as it would provide a means to pull a lot of trash to you for some AOE tanking.  The next best option seems like it would be Remorseless Winter, as the stuns may prove beneficial when fighting trash, but I feel I would get more use from a tank perspective out of Gorefiend’s Grasp.

Glyphs

For tanking, there aren’t many options for glyphs that really make a lot of sense.  The first no-brainer is Glyph of Vampiric Blood, sure there is a trade-off but being a tank it makes the most sense, as you will be the focus on heals anyway.  The second is Glyph of Pestilence, increasing the range just helps spread your diseases among adds, and with no downside this is a pretty solid option.  The final major glyph is a bit tougher choice which per Blizzard’s goal will rely on your playstyle and the fights you are going up against.

• Glyph of Icebound Fortitude, gives you more access to this mitigation ability, but for shorter periods of time.
• Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon, this in theory should increase your threat generation

For my baseline I will most likely go with Glyph of Icebound Fortitude.

Your minor glyphs are purely cosmetic and entirely your choice, but stay away from Glyph of Army of the Dead and Glyph of Tranquil Grip.  As both remove the taunt aspect from your abilities, and as a tank you may find situations where you need those.

At the end this will be my build going into Mists of Pandaria: http://mop.wowhead.com/mists-of-pandaria-talent-calculator#kEH|dMsVom

Spells & Abilities

Please note when tanking you should be in Blood Presence.

One of the important specializations that Blood has is Scarlet Fever.  This now makes blood boil refresh your diseases on targets.  This will be an important part of your rotation.

You will continue to open with getting your diseases on your target, mostly through Outbreak.  If there is more than 1 target, you will want to spread your diseases via Pestilence, unless you took Roiling Blood as your Tier 1 talent, then Blood Boil will spread your diseases as well.  Next you will be using your Death Strike as your primary strike, note that in 5.0.4 it can no longer be parried.  Another mechanic to be aware of is the revamped Scent of Blood.  This will build up organically and help your self healing via Death Strike.  You will be using Heart Strike and Blood Boil to use those blood runes.  Keep in mind Blood Boil will be refreshing your diseases on targets.  Heart Strike will hit up to 3 targets, beyond that Blood Boil should be used for 4 or more targets and when your diseases need to be refreshed.  Finally use Rune Strike to burn down your runic power.

Your main tanking cooldowns will be:

• Icebound Fortitude
• Vampiric Blood
• Death Pact
• Lichborne, Anti-Magic Zone, or Purgatory
• Rune Tap
• Dancing Rune Weapon
• Bone Shield

Many of these will be situational.  If you chose Lichborne as your talent, you will combine it with Death Coil to heal yourself.  If you chose Plague Leech in Tier 1 talent, you can combine that with the use of Rune Tap.  I included Death Pact as a cooldown above, if you choose it, you will need to combine it with Raise Dead spell (for obvious reasons).

Stats

You are still going to want a solid combination of Stamina, Mastery, Parry and Dodge.  Once again it seems like Expertise and Hit will be up to the individual.  Personally I haven’t put much stock in these since threat hasn’t been much of an issue lately, but I like to have some, I just don’t go out of my way to have them.  Stamina I let come organically unless I am gemming a combination gem of +stamina and another stat.

Conclusion

The end of the day, most of our “good stuff” will come by default.  There is some pretty straight forward choices via talents and glyphs for us.  Even our rotation doesn’t change much.  Blood Boil refreshing our diseases is really one of the biggest changes to how we function.  Those who have been tanking as a DK for a while, should be able to pick most of this up fairly quickly.