Flux

Which stat is the best? What should you be stacking?  There is a bewildering mass of over thirty five of them. And if that isn’t confusing enough their value depends on talent spec, unseen milestones/caps, and even each other. Without a degree from Gnomeregan your mechanical chicken mount has a better chance to scratch out an answer.

We have compiled a monolithic table of cliffnotes so you can skip Gnomer.

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One of the more popular debates that surfaces on WoW forums like an unkillable multi-headed troll is, are hybrids better?

What’s a hybrid?  Blizzard designed the game with specialists and hybrids. The specialty classes are supposed to be the best at something, like ranged damage, while the hybrids do more than one thing like healing and melee damage, but not as well. In the first stage of the game this works very much as advertised. However in the last stage of the game, raiding or arena, it’s murkier because changing between roles requires a talent respec which is hardly something you can do quickly while off killing trolls.

During the first stage of the game there isn’t much debate which is better.  This is because it doesn’t matter.  You spend most of your time soloing.  And leveling up is not difficult, only time consuming.  But the debate burns with feverish passion in the end game when players start discussing nerfs, class balance, and raiding.

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With the right talents there are three tanking classes; druid, paladin, and warrior. There is a fourth one eventually which we will see in the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion, The Death Knight.

For those of you who don’t tank, what’s the difference? Do you even care what kind of tank you have? Is there a better tank for healers or for damage dealers?

In long single target fights they all create comparable threat. The differences lie with initial aggro, healing, offtanking, multiple targets, and special abilities. Let’s take a look at each of them and what you should keep in mind when you are healing or dps’ing damage.

Druids

• best hitpoints and armor
• average initial aggro and multiple target
• worst avoidance

Druids are the easiest tanks to heal with their large hit point pools and high armor. With the right talents and gear they take damage light and consistently. Healers assigned to the druid often have extra time to take care of others. However over long fights as a healer you may find that the consistent damage may take more total healing than for a Warrior and drain your mana.

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As discussed like wildfire in the WoW forums, using a macro, Druids can now drink potions while shapeshifted. This is because of the cancelform feature added in the 2.3 patch. Here is an example macro:

#show Super Healing Potion
/cancelform
/use Super Healing Potion
/use Master Healthstone
/cast Dire Bear Form

Limitations and misconceptions:

• It only works with items that do not trigger a global cooldown.
• You must not currently be under a global cooldown.
• Don’t hit the macro quickly twice in a row.
• You must have enough mana to shift back.
• You WILL NOT get hit out of form.

What does this mean and why does it work? It works because cancelform doesn’t trigger a global cooldown. To understand this let’s look at what the global cooldown is. Most abilities and items in the game trigger a timer that lasts 1-1.5 seconds. During that timer, you must wait before you can do something else. This is partly so you can’t button mash some buttons over and over to high speed victory. But more importantly in this case it’s so the server and the client, blizzard’s server and your computer, need time to exchange information on what’s happening during the fight.

Drinking potions and using healthstones don’t trigger a global cooldown. That means this macro has one line that does, the last one which shifts back to form. So as far as the server is concerned everything in the macro happens all at once. The only time this isn’t true, and the only time you are at risk of getting hit during that instantaneous time that you are out of form, is when your computer takes more time to apply the change than the latency to blizzard’s server. This is effectively never.

There are two risks. You must make sure you have enough mana in caster form to switch back. This is rarely a problem as a bear or cat, unless you are doing a lot of shifting. And the other is that you must be sure you aren’t currently under a cooldown. If you are then the last line in the macro will fail and you will be left in caster form. So wait 1.5 seconds since your last mangle, shread, or other ability before using the macro. And don’t button mash and hit the macro more than one time.

How useful is this? It’s useful as an emergency ability as a tank. And it’s handy for cat form when healers don’t have time to throw heals on you during a fight.