First, we have the original Flametongue Weapon change from a few days ago: “Flametongue Weapon damage now scales from attack power instead of spell power (for Enhancement shaman only).” According to current PTR testing, it is bugged on the PTR and inheriting the 50% damage reduction when used on an offhand weapon. However, without that bug the damage seemed consistent with current Flametongue, meaning it isn’t a nerf provided the bug gets changed. Unfortunately, the power of Flametongue weapon meant that it still seemed a slight increase in DPS to use double flametongue with a caster weapon.

As a result, meet the new nerf on the block: “Flametongue Weapon procs now deal roughly 20% less damage.” This is a pretty blatant damage nerf to our offhand FT procs and should be enough to force us into using that old staple, Windfury weapon. On the other hand of the spectrum, though, we see this pretty awesome buff: “The Windfury Weapon proc can now trigger 3 additional attacks, up from 2.” This hopefully will counteract the damage loss from not using a caster weapon w/flametongue and the damage loss from losing 20% FT damage in our offhand. If it manages to keep damage consistent with where it is now while shifting us back to using WF/FT, patch 4.0.6 is really starting to look up.

# Chain Heal’s effectiveness has been increased by approximately 10%.

# Hex now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

# Purge now dispels a single effect instead of two.

# Tremor Totem has been redesigned. The totem is now usable under Fear, Charm, or Sleep effects, and pulses much more rapidly, but lasts 6 seconds and has a 1-minute cooldown.

# Talent Specializations

* Elemental Combat

o Earthquake damage has been increased by approximately 10%.

* Enhancement

o Flametongue Weapon damage now scales from attack power instead of spell power (for Enhancement shaman only).

o Purge no longer has its mana cost reduced by Mental Quickness.

* Restoration

o Cleansing Waters no longer fires its heal effect twice when a shaman removes a Magic and a Curse debuff with a single cast.

o Deep Healing (Mastery) has been increased to 3% per point, up from 2.5%.

o Greater Healing Wave mana cost has been increased by 10%; healing done has been increased by 20%.

o Mana Tide Totem has been redesigned. The totem no longer multiplies the Spirit of those affected by it. It instead gives a flat amount of Spirit equal to 400% of the casting shaman’s Spirit, exclusive to short-term Spirit buffs affecting the shaman when the totem is dropped.

Source.

The major talking points here:

PVP nerfs: The purge nerf was beyond needed. No, seriously. I don’t want anyone reading this to be blinded by the love of their class and pretend that this isn’t a good change for the game. Enhancement’s purge cost 820 mana at 85 and dispelled two debuffs. Dispel protection on nearly everything was removed from the game. The unfortunate side of this is that annoying filler things like rejuvenation will get in the way when you’re really trying to dispel innervate but in the end this was needed. The two seconds less on hex makes me cringe a small bit, but at the same time it’s a curse and not a magic effect like fear/polymorph/and such.The change to tremor is weird- it’s a fear break when we really need it, but we can no longer just keep it down as fear protection.

Caster mainhand nerfs: Currently, flametongue takes heavily from our spellpower. Really heavily. This is part of what makes a caster mainhand so good- beyond adding to all of our spell damage, double flametongue imbues with the caster sp make for some very hard hitting flametongue hits. However, changing FT to scale from spellpower could have some negative side effects (such as the coefficient on FT being bad enough that we lose damage overall). Or, it could be so good that we continue to use a spellpower weapon to boost the rest of our spell damage, as losing the ap from not having an agility weapon won’t contribute that much to our dps. Time will tell.

Overall, my first look at the changes is optimistic. The nerfs to enhance pvp were needed (though tremor has me scratching my head a bit), and the FT change has me hopeful but scared.

A) Your items suck. Honestly, I get it: You spent all of Wrath of the Lich King workin’ hard for your purplez. You have deep, lasting, emotional connections with everything from your Heroic Sindragosa necklace to those boots from ToC that you were never able to upgrade. The idea of getting rid of them makes you sad, like you’re ditching your aging dog for a new puppy.

Get over it. I know that heroic Black Bruise is nice and you worked hard for it, but the Necrotic Touch proc has sucked since 4.0.1, and it sucks even more as a leveling item. Add into that the fact that there are blue weapons that require level 80 that have the same dps as H Black Bruise (that looks ten times better). The end result: Your weapons should be replaced by level 81, if you get lucky with drops. Stonecore (which you can queue for at 81 if you’ve found the portal), has two excellent Enhancement weapons: Heavy Geode Mace and Fist of Pained Senses. HGM has some lackluster leveling stats, but either hit or expertise can be reforged into mastery. Both of these weapons blow every weapon from WoTLK (from Pride to Heroic Havoc’s Call) out of the water. You’re hurting yourself by hanging on to your relics.

Did I mention how cool they look?

Armor is slightly less important to replace asap, but they’ll still be replaced soon. Elam just hit 83 and got Troggbane Chestguard to replace his 264 Tier10 Chest. It comes out to four more agility (counting two 20 agi gems), 60 more haste, 137 less crit rating, and a wopping 137 mastery. I’d exchange 137 crit for 137 mastery any day of the week. The only downside is losing my 4pct10, which means I won’t be equipping the Green quest reward until I can find another green that outpaces my tier gear.

Trinkets should be replaced fairly soon. Hyjal has Bileberry Smelling Salts, early Deepholm has Gear Detector. The base agility on these trinkets is huge, kicking the crap out of Herkuml War Token‘s haste, Tiny Abomination in a Jar‘s…everything, and Deathbringer’s Will‘s crit base. The haste procs are meh enough that Sharpened Twilight Scale might be worth hanging onto, though.

B) Enchant. Enchanting is your friend, and WILL make your life easier. This is a rule for both leveling and early heroic grinding- if it’s on you, you should enchant it and gem it. WoTLK enchanting mats are dirt cheap (I was buying Dream Shards at 50silver a piece last night. In total, berserking cost me 30 gold), and those enchants are still relevant. If you get an item in a heroic or five that you know will be replaced in a week, spend the thirty gold to enchant it with WoTLK enchants and blue or low-priced epic gems. No one will shame you for putting lesser-quality gems in lesser-quality items, and it’s so cheap to do now that there’s no excuse to lessen your performance by not doing it.

Now, back to leveling. See you all at 85!

I'd Spirit Tap that.

This post isn’t about Clergelam, though. As much as I love her (and wish she was already 80 so she could be my main alt), Clergelam will have to sit on the backburner for now. Because, in case you haven’t heard, Cataclysm is coming out. It’s coming out tonight.

However, while I know the impending doom of Azeroth is totally news to all of us, I have more news that ISN’T quite as common knowledge. This is good news. It’s personal news, news that makes my wallet happy and makes me as giddy as a stereotype at a Klan meeting. I got a job. And, not just any job. I got THE job.

I am officially Wow Insider’s new Enhancement Shaman columnist. I’ll be covering totems, I’ll be covering healing, I’ll be covering the benefits of being a gigantic cow person (being able to fit through doors is not one of them). I’ll be writing, and I’ll be getting paid for it. (And I’ll have my name and twitter link on a shiny “about” page.)

Please update your RSS feeds, your google readers, and proceed to e-stalk me. I promise I’ll be worth it!

Unfortunately, I’m not born to heal. I enjoy it on a Resto Shaman as a break from the repetitiveness of the weekly grind, but I’ve never managed to make a mainspec out of it. With Clergelam, I told myself this would be different, that the DPS nature of smite spec would be enough to convince me to give up my murderous ways and focus on saving lives. I told myself that this would be “the one,” the alt where I main-specced heals without a thought of changing.

Unfortunately, an Elam never changes it’s spot. I think part of it might have been the fact that they reduced the cost of Dual Spec by 990 gold. I think another part of it might have been my annoyance at Smite healing. I think a third part of it might be the fact that I really, really think Shadowform looks cool, in all it’s emo glory. And, a big part of it might have been the fact that no other spec allows you to turn your filler spell into a Death Ray from Space when turned into a goth turkey.

You may fire when ready, Commander.

Clergelam is Shadow now. Not only is she shadow, but she’s dual-specced Shadow- one for battlegrounding, one for instances. I’ve fallen for this spec hard. It’s literally everything I want in a caster dps spec. It’s dot-centric like Affliction, but instead of having a lameass filler like Shadowbolt it has Mind Flay. The primary nuke not only hits hard, but it procs an ability that increases the damage of most of your other abilities. It’s a complex enough spec that I actually needed to download ForteXorcist for multiple-target dotting.

The Keybinds are a funny story. Ask me to explain them sometime.

Most importantly, Shadow has Shadow Word: Death. Being a Shaman, I have never had access to an “Execute” ability. I’ve never even had one of the lame Mage-style executes, the ones that give you +% damage done to targets below x% health. On Elam, execute range is my least favorite part of a boss fight, as I get to watch myself dropping down below the classes that do more damage at the end of fights. When I mained Darwinism for a few months, Kill Shot filled me with joy whenever I pressed it. Shadow Word: Death is my new Kill Shot. Glyphed, I get to use it at least twice a boss fight, generally with disastrous results to my own hit points. (Not going to lie, I get some sort of  strange happy feeling watching my health drop from SW:D. Crits actually make me laugh out loud. ) It hits hard, it procs Glyph of Spirit Tap if it kills the target, it gives me 10% mana back of it doesn’t, and it’s just generally fun to use. I love it.

I’m going to have to respec one of my two Shadow specs heals eventually. The main reason for this is that I have a sick obsession with running Burning Crusade heroics when I’m between 70 and 75, and leveling Sashafears taught me that hour long dps queues waiting for a healer aren’t fun. I also think I should possibly break my illogical hatred of Holy and see if Chakra is everything it’s cracked up to be. (I doubt it.) Those will be respecs out of practicality, though. Shadow is my main spec now, and will remain my mainspec. Whether it’s multi-dotting mobs (550 dps on Golem Lord Arglemach? Yesplz.), masochistically executing bosses, or afking in Org in shadowform on my Turbo-trike, I’m sold on shadow.

This plan served me well in the beginning. Discipline is an awesome leveling spec when you hit level 10, as a single smite and a penance are a world of hurt for any mob brazen enough to touch your holyness. I plowed through the Northern Barrens. Quillboar, Savannah Hunters, even the dreaded giraffes had nothing on my mental discipline. Smite was not a terribly fun spell at this time, as it’s cast is as long as fireball’s but hits for half it’s damage. That fact was slightly clouded by the fact that Penance WAS a fun spell to cast. Every 12 seconds I could target a mob and have them in execute range before they were halfway to me. It was glorious.

Finally, after a good long 2-3 hours of /played, Clergelam was a teenager and ready to queue for her first instance. I was excited beyond reason. I’ve healed Ragefire Chasm on druids, on paladins, on shaman, on Donder and Blitzen. I’d even healed it once on my boyfriend’s priest, circa 2008. However, this Ragefire Chasm was the new post-Shattering Ragefire Chasm, tuned to put the older RFC to shame. And, I was smite spec. (Considering the first three talents in discipline are +6% Healing/Damage, +20% Power Word Shield Absorb, and -10% Mana Cost on Instants, I’m not quite sure why I identified as smite spec at such a young age. Adults told me “it’s just a phase,” and “you’re too young to know,” but by the Light I knew.)

It went abysmally. At  level 15, priests have access to three heals- Renew, Power Word: Shield, and Flash Heal. Flash Heal is the high throughput/high mana cost/low cast time heal every healer has now. Renew and PW:S are both instant casts. All of these are actually very mana intense spells. I was a cocky little priest, and we had an even cockier tank who hadn’t quite clued in to the fact that mana is an issue now and healing isn’t just putting PW:S or Earth Shield on the tank and afking. Due to my inflated ego, I brought 0 water. Due to his inflated ego, he proceeded to pull every trogg (including the first boss) in the first large room of RFC and die a horrific death while I was already out of mana from trying to roll renews and Power Word: Shields on my entire group. He apologized about not looking at my mana, I apologized for not looking at my mana, and we bro’d it up and proceeded to finish the instance without any further incident.

Level 16 saw me gain “Heal,” priest’s low throughput/low mana cost/ high cast time ability that makes patching up tanks a breeze. An incredibly boring, stagnant breeze that smells fetid and no one likes to do, but it gets the job done. Levels 19 and 21 gave me my first taste of smiting, giving me ‘Evangelism,” a talent that stacks every time you cast smite, ending at five. It increases your Smite/Holy Fire/Penance damage by 4% per stack, and reduces their mana cost by 6% per stack. At 23, you get Archangel, which consumes your Evangelism stacks to give you 5% mana back and increase your healing by 3% per stack consumed. In the 19-28 scheme of things, these talents are largely worthless. 5% total mana is a waste when Smite isn’t doing anything more for you than dealing damage, and the 15% healing buff will be spent making up for the healing you weren’t doing stacking Evangelism to five stacks. If I were to do the whole process again, I’d skip those talents for 23/25/ and 27, and use my talent points at 19 and 21 for Soul Warding, reducing the cooldown on Power Word: Shield by one second.

Level 31 is where Smite spec comes into it’s own. Once there, you hit 2/2 “Atonement,” which heals party members within 8 yards of the target you hit with your smite for as much as Smite did damage. It’s a smart heal, so it targets the person within 8 yards with the lowest health deficit. With 5 stacks of Evangelism up, it’s nearly as cheap to cast as heal, has a lower cast time, but does somewhat less healing…meaning it’s definitely not your throughput ability. (The unfortunate side effect is it doesn’t heal those pesky mages/hunters/yourself who are being inconvenient and not standing in melee range.) With access to Power Infusion coming at level 33, you can deal some damage while keeping on top of incoming party damage.

He Went To Herod.

87 dps is low for that level, but Herod’s bladestorm ability causes him to go immune to damage for 10 seconds at a time. He bladestormed five times, so fifty seconds of the fight were spent not doing anything but casting heal. (Since he’s immune, I couldn’t heal those pesky melee standing in bladestorm with Atonement.) Atonement still was my most healing done, and I rocked everyone but the tank on damage. (In the mage’s defense, he was casting one every minute or so.)

The problem with this spec? Not every instance is Scarlet Monastery: Armory. In SM:A, healing is easy enough that Power Word: Shield+Atonement can keep up the tank and melee while a penance every 10 seconds or so will patch up any extra damage coming in. While boss/mob health was tuned to proper levels, their damage output is very lackluster. This isn’t the case for a lot of the instances coming up within the next level bracket. All three Dire Mauls, Scholomance, Stratholme, all have boss fights that can do pretty baller damage, and most of them have closely packed mobs that result in tanks picking up more groups then they’re meant to handle. In these cases, you’re relying on rolling shields on people with aggro, penancing the tank, Prayer of Healing when the entire group has damage coming in, and using heal to patch up minor inconveniences because you don’t have the time to build Evangelism to 5 stacks. And, Evangelism is an ability that encourages you to hate your tanks. Either they’re too careful and pull too slowly and Evangelism falls off (20 second duration seems like a lot of time at first glance. In reality, it blows. And it got buffed by 5 seconds in 4.0.3.), or they’re too reckless, pull everything, and you can’t get Evangelism to the 5 stacks you need for smite. I’m not saying that Smitespec doesn’t work as a healing spec. This is my first priest, and she’s level 46. I’m most definitely not an expert. However, I find the entire spec to be less enjoyable to play as a healer than restoration Shaman/Druid, which makes it decidedly middle of the line for me. (Holy priest is fourth, paladin is fifth.)

On another note, though, I’ve found some uses for Smitespec far beyond being the main healer of the group. In that role, I found myself frustrated and not wanting to queue. However, queuing as dps is an entirely different matter, especially for instances that I saw the healer struggling in (Scholomance and Dire Maul: Gordok Commons) were the two huge ones. My dps as shadow is averaging between 200-225 on boss fights. As smitespam, it’s 150-175, so about 3/4 of what my dark side can do. However, Vampiric Embrace blows as a hybrid healing ability, while Atonement provides the healer with a low throughput heal that tops off tanks and melee every 2.5 seconds. If things get really dicey (or the healer dies to aggro), I can pop Archangel and do 15% more healing and put out the same throughput as the healer was.

If healing heroics at level 85 is as hard as the beta forums suggested, I can see a dps smite spec as being one of the most desired dps specs in the game. It has it’s issues- while we can glyph for 18% smite hit (allowing us to hit heroic/raid bosses), dpsing smite priests will have to gear for the 18% hit for penance/holy fire. With no spirit-to-hit conversion like most hybrid healer/dps classes have now (ele shaman/shadow priests/boomkin), that will become exceptionally annoying. Additionally, with a tree with only 8 dps talents in all (Evangelism, Archangel, Atonement, Power Infusion, Train of Thought), it’s dps continues to fall short of actual dps at every bracket.If it retains the 3/4 ratio that I’m seeing now, I see potential in it. Having a dps/off-healer has the power to make a lot of Cata heroics much easier on healer mana (some regular 5 mana boss fights had me casting healing rain on cooldown on beta as enhancement). However, if the dps falls significantly shorter than that of actual dpsers, it will be essentially the same as having two healers queue…which could prove helpful, but incredibly tedious for heroics balanced around 3dps and one healer. If the damage can remain high, there might even be a niche for smitespam priests as the third healer in 10man runs. There were a number of fights in ICC 10 where we three healed and it was overkill, but two healing proved too difficult on the healers while we were learning the encounters. Having a third healer who keeps up the dps while managing to relieve some of that burden from dps could be exactly what the doctor ordered…provided it’s balanced in a way that actually makes the spec attractive to play.

My parents are both Presbyterian Pastors, a profession I can honestly say I’ve had no intention of entering since I was 7 and my mom was pinning homework assignments I drew of my dad on the refrigerator. This philosophy on career choices bled into World of Warcraft, where until last week my highest level priest was 17. I’m not sure what it is that turned me off the class. Freud would have his theories, but I think it has something more to do with the fact that I hate Paladins. And, after leveling one of those to 80 (how I found the resolve, I do not know), I vowed to never again pick a class whose main descriptive word is “goldenrod.” I also despise Blood Elves with a passion, and my opinion on trolls is “cool, but not for me.” Undead? They’re just ugly. (If they ever let us skin our undead to be another race that looks undead, though, I’m totally there.)

However, patch 4.0.3. changed all of that. After literally a year of anticipation, the Shattering has come and Deathwing has unleashed herds of Tauren Priest unto this world, in all their Divine Bovine(y) goodness. Following my tradition of only caring for characters if they’re of the so-rare-it’s-still-living-steak variety, I launched straight into leveling my first real priest. Five minutes ago, Clergelam hit forty. And, so far, I love it.

Leveling received a huge buff in 4.0.1, when talent trees allow us to get signature talents at incredibly low level. When Deathwing broke the world (and the servers), leveling saw it’s second huge buff- a retooling of the old world. Quests now breadcrumb into other quests, they require significantly less movement, and they’re written as to be engaging. However, I have little experience past Mulgore and the first half of Northern Barrens when it comes to questing. My focus has primarily been on dungeons.

Dungeons are incredible now. Blizzard has done an excellent job of going back to all of their old content and retuning it to be appropriately difficult for the level you are. No more of these silly “immolate-conflag-soulburn-soulfire-dead” bosses of a week ago. Bosses today, from Ragefire Chasm to Scarlet Monastery: Cathedral, take a beating. Moreover, they can dish out the hurt. Some have even taken it upon themselves to teach new players a vital life lesson for all of World of Warcraft: Don’t Stand in The Bad.

Shadowfang Keep. Level 20ish. Lots of Bad.

Some dungeons have been retooled entirely- Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines being the most significant examples of this, though Stormwind Stockades as well. They feature new bosses, and unlike most low level bosses these ones come with actual weird mechanics. They hurt like heck (the first boss of SFK is going to be a pug killer, doubtlessly), and they don’t go down easy. For those dungeons who didn’t get a total redesign, some changes were made. Razorfen Kraul is now a 30-35 instance, while it’s counterpart Razorfen Downs is even higher. Maraudon was dropped into the 30s, and Scholomance was moved to 40.This made for some slight annoyance in the late 20s, where the hell-hole of Gnomeragan and Scarlet Monastery: Graveyard provided my only dungeon choices for 3-4 levels, but once past that hurdle I’ve had a cornucopia of dungeons to feast on.

My level 40 Dungeon List.

But wait, there’s more! An entire new quest system has been put in place for the newly remade instances. Most instance-related quests have received a makeover, and are now given by questgivers inside the instance proper. This means that when you do a random instance for the first time, you’re not only getting the instance experience and the random experience, but you’re also rocking thousands of experience in quest rewards. While straight up quest leveling might be the fastest way to level now, this gives questing a run for it’s money. There’s also more to instance questing than just having quest givers at the entrance, too. For quests that are part of a chain, they will give you the option to “complete” the quest and give you a new objective for your next quest, saving you a run back to the beginning of the instance. For those not part of a chain, you have the handy “teleport out of dungeon” and “teleport to dungeon” buttons to allow you to skip the run and focus on the quest rewards.

Look at those shiny Uldaman quests.

Finally, if all of those endorsements weren’t enough to get you salivating for dungeon leveling, here’s the kicker: You can represent your faction of choice while running instances, allowing you to garner reputation without having to quest or donate stacks of cloth. If you’re a Tauren who wants a Raptor mount, a Troll who wants a turbo-trike, or an Undead who wants a kodo, you just need to buy the tabard at your local city quartermaster (conveniently located next to the city flight masters). On another positive note, these tabards actually look cool, making you want to wear them.

As a final note- the changes to low level questing/instancing have made a lot of people play lowbie alts. DPS queues are around 5 minutes for me, and healing queues are almost always instant. There’s really no harm in trying the refurbished zones out. (Unless you wipe, which is a distinct possibility.)

I have vowed never to write a coming out story. This is done for a number of reasons: One, 90% of them are boring and terribly written. Two, 90% of them are written as coping mechanisms- which is a good thing- but I never had to actually cope with coming out so I missed that “write” of passage. Three, my parents aren’t douchebags. Clergypersons with doctorate/masters degrees in Theology, maybe. Douchebags? Not so much. The fact is, though, that many LGBT persons DO have to deal with parents who are as anti-gay as the Pope, and that a lot of the coming out stories that emerge from these pairing of gay teen and gay-hating parent end in Thanksgiving Day falling outs that spawn therapy sessions and stories that are overwrought with emotion and underwrought with spellcheck.

My predictions going into tonight’s episode of Glee was that Karofsky’s story would unfold like a thousand teenage angst poems before it: Karofsky’s dad would show up, prove to watchers around the country that Karofsky is partially fucked up due to his father being an ignorant douchebag who hates gay people (and is probably racist and sexist to boot) who shouts too much and beats his children. It would have been easy after this to point at Karofsky and go “he’s a jerkwad because his father is a jerkwad.” Ryan Murphy fucked that all up, and I give him props for it-despite it making my job as a Kurtofsky shipper that much harder. He took the cliché and ignored it, choosing instead to paint Karofsky’s father as a mild-mannered old guy who is as confused about his son’s emotional turmoil as Karofsky is about his sexuality.

And, make no mistake, Karofsky is in emotional turmoil. Today’s episode included a terrifying-yet-sexually-charged staredown with Kurt where he desperately sought to assert his own masculinity to the only guy in the school who knows he’s gay. In Sue’s office, his father also pointed out that Karofsky’s grades have been dropping from As and Bs to significantly lower, and that he’s acting out and talking back. Karofsky is displaying many of the signs of a suicidal teenager right now. He’s acting out, he’s neglecting school, he’s getting violent. He’s attempting to either ignore or beat down his own homosexuality, and his abuse of Kurt is him getting violent because Kurt is the external symbol of a problem within him that he can’t push into lockers until it goes away. Karofsky literally hates himself, and Kurt was suffering because Karofsky had no other outlet for his self-loathing.

Here are some facts about LGBT Teen suicide, taken from The Trevor Project (1):

• In the United States, more than 34,000 people die by suicide each year . Suicide is the third leading cause of death among 15 to 24-year-olds, accounting for over 12% of deaths in this age group; only accidents and homicide occur more frequently.

• Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. Questioning youth who are less certain of their sexual orientation report even higher levels of substance abuse and depressed thoughts than their heterosexual or openly LGBT-identified peers

• More than 1/3 of LGB youth report having made a suicide attempt.

Karofsky’s plot seems to be heading in this direction. Kurt left school, so the focus on his character can’t be making fun of the gay kid anymore. Chances are that after his expulsion and Kurt’s leaving, Karofsky’s going to be tasting a lot of what Kurt has been going through the past two weeks from the New Direction kids. We’re likely to see scenes of him getting pushed into lockers and slushied in the face, with none of the support or coping capabilities Kurt had. If he gets knocked off his pedestal of “scariest guy in McKinnley High,” he’s going to have nothing left. Karofsky will be worthless, self-loathing, and knowing that he managed to drive off the one person that could possibly have made him feel better about himself.

I hope to God that Karofsky’s plot won’t go that far, and Glee‘s status as a comedic show (vs., say, Degrassi)makes a storyline that ends in suicide less likely. However, I’m fairly certain there’s no feasible way for Karofsky to overcome his self-hatred, redeem himself, and get the boy this season. That doesn’t mean I’m not hoping for it endgame, but for now I simply want Karofsky to grow into a teenager who accepts and loves himself. Any other form of love can wait.

I’m not quite sure I’m team Kurtofsky anymore. I’m not sure I ever have been team Kurtofsky, because Kurt honestly doesn’t factor into my opinions on this story line. I’m team Karofsky. I see a kid who is in pain, who hates himself, who has no idea how to cope with being the person his biology makes him, and all I want to do is jump into my TV and give the guy a hug and tell him “It Gets Better.”

1. http://www.thetrevorproject.org/suicide-resources/suicidal-signs

Nearly three years later, everything has changed. Buffs to leveling, nerfs to experience needed, ridiculous buffs to damage output at lower levels (yes, that’s 47 Killing Blows), have made leveling a breeze, not to mention enjoyable. I consider this to be an excellent change, as I don’t believe that any one should play, write, or talk about balance issues in the World of Warcraft without having walked in the galoshes of every other class. Playing one single class allows us to kid ourselves into pretending that we’re the only class that “has it bad,” we’re the only class that has exploitable weaknesses. We pretend that the other nine classes are played by hooking up an “Easy” button from Staples as our mouse and mashing our head against it. This is a lie for every class except low level rogues. (Bind Easy to ambush, profit.)

I’m an altoholic. I have 6 80s, two characters leveling through Northrend, one in late-Outland, and one in early Stranglethorn Vale. I have no actual desire to change mains (partly because if I do switch mains I imagine the collective shaman community will flay me a live. Ditch them once: For shame. Ditch them twice: Murder.) However, as I have experience playing something like 28 of the 30 specs in the World of Warcraft arsenal, I figured I’d take the time to express my views on what the best five specs going into Cataclysm are.

Note: All of this is subjective. I’m also not making any claims based on numbers or viability of said spec, I’m making claims based on ingenuity of idea and overall playstyle. This isn’t “I’d play this spec to top meters in Cataclysm.” This is “I’d play this spec to have fun in Cataclysm.”

Number 5. Blood Death Knight.

The Blood Death Knight barely scraped onto my list today, getting in on the merits of “I @#$%ing hate Paladin, Warriors are boring, and I need a plate spec so an entire community doesn’t feel ostracized.” I almost skipped over Blood entirely because my hatred for Death Knight dps specs blinded me from the virtues of their one tank spec, but once I remembered Blood’s existence it was like a match made in Acherus. Blood Death Knights had a massive transformation in October, where they went from ARP stacking Meat Cleavers to blood-sucking Meat Shields. Death Strike in itself is a cool concept, it’s a drain-life esque ability on a massive scale, while Bloodworms add a bit of gore and some more fancy healing on top. Throw in some rune tap to convert one blood/death rune to 15% of your health every minute and you might as well start queuing with four dps…. though maybe one of them should be a hybrid, just in case. (This is a gross exaggeration of how much they actually heal for, but the idea on it’s own is cool!) My one real problem with Blood Death Knights is that Dancing Rune Weapon seems out of place in the Cullen-family inspired tree. Maybe make the 31 pointer a passive that makes your skin glitter in the sunlight?

4. Elemental Shaman

The Elemental Shaman will be remembered as one of the real excellent examples of developers actually listening to player feedback. “Ele Shaman had a static and boring rotation in Wrath of the Lich King.” Let’s throw in some chaos with Lava Surge, Unleash Elements, and Fulmination to keep you on your toes. “Ele Shaman hate having to waste three talent points in Improved Shields to get Ancestral Swiftness. We don’t need more mp5.” Let’s give Ele shaman rolling thunder as a mana return talent and Fulmination so that Improved Shields=improved damage! “Ele Shaman have a severe case of turret syndrome.” Unleash Elements and Fulmination are both instant and castable on the move! Also, Spiritwalker’s Grace lets you cast while you pew pew. “We got everything but Searing Totem being 26 yards blows.” That’s annoying, we agree. Here, have a talent to fix it at 85.

I’m honestly not jealous of Ele, just impressed at how the developers addressed practically every gameplay problem they had in WoTLK. Bravo, Blizzard!

3. Affliction Warlock.

There’s something incredibly satisfying about seeing giant numbers pop-up on your screen. However, sometimes you’d rather kill the boss by infecting her/his body with a myriad of curses and magical ailments that corrupt and decay. For the evil witch doctor in all of us, the Affliction warlock is our go to caster dps. With handy new tools like Soul Swap (which allows you to move your dots off mob 1 and on to mob 2), half of the dots being refreshed by some other filler ability that’s already in the lock’s priority, and an Area of Effect Curse of Elements, the Warlock’s toolbox has been broadened. However, I have a few hopes for the spec I’d like to see before I consider leveling mine to 85- 1) I’d like to see Drain Life do more damage than Shadowbolt on a cast-by-cast basis, so it becomes the go-to filler ability. It’s just more fun and afflictiony. 2) A use for Soulburn for Affliction that doesn’t rely on aoe situations. Blizzard made the Soul Shard system significantly cooler this patch…but it’s still not quite awesome yet.

2. Beast Mastery Hunter

Rogues may have the Tricks of the Trade, but Beast Mastery Hunters have the tools. BM hunters have a pet for literally every situation, from providing your raid with 10% melee haste to Bloodlusting. Beast Mastery Hunters pet’s fill the missing gap in every raid’s lineup, and with 90% less damage from AoE they’re much sturdier than your standard mouthbreathing Enhancement Shaman in a void zone. I also just might happen to be the only person who has played a hunter main who LIKES the changes to focus. New resource system means learning and adapting new skills to play as well as diversifying classes, two aspects of WoW I very much enjoy. I also never thought hunters made much sense with mana as a system unless they’re all D&D Arcane Archers.

(Also, what other class in the game lets you have multiple types of Dinosaurs follow you around and smite your enemies? That’s right- none!)

1. Smite-Spec Disc Priest.

Part of me hates admitting my newfound love for Discipline Priests…mainly because they’re possibly one of the trendiest class/spec combinations to come out of Wrath of the Lich King. In Wrath of the Lich King, it seemed every priest was discipline. And if they weren’t discipline, it’s because 3.0.1 hit and Chakra was just released. 4.0.1. introduced a new style of Discipline healing- through talents, your Smites get beefed up after casting them. Talents also cause your smite to hit the person within 8 yards with the lowest health for the same amount of healing as the Smite did damage. Add that to Train of Thought, which lowers the CD on your penance every time you Smite, and you have the potential for some mediocre damage done and some mediocre healing done…at the same time! You can then convert your stacks of beefed up Smite Spammage to grow wings and heal 15% better for 15 seconds, allowing you to bump up your throughput in times of need. To me, this makes smite-specced disc priests a pretty excellent third healer for ten mans- for fights with healing downtime and late surges of healing needed (Saurfang and Professor Putricide come to mind), having a healer who can do enough damage that they’re above the tanks while being able to switch into throughput mode if shit hits the fan is the definition of a fun spec. It’s dynamic, it’s an entirely new concept for a game whose closest thing to a dps/healer hybrid was an Enhancement shaman dual wielding Earthliving Weapon, and it’s probably the second thing I’ll be leveling to 85.

I have a confession to make. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is doubtlessly my least favorite Harry Potter book. Between a 200 page camping trip, the nearly Deua Ex Machina introduction of “The Deathly Hallows” as the way to defeat Voldemort, the entire Ron Weasley storyline, Draco’s half-finished redemption plot arc, and the fact that the only thing I got for finishing the book the day it was released was a killer headache and a lack of real fulfillment, Deathly Hallows was never even on the same playing field as my favorites Prisoner of Azkaban and Order of the Phoenix.

Despite this, I’ve spent the better part of the last year highly anticipating the film version of Harry Potter and the Epic Camping Trip, the first part of the two-part movie finale to the Harry Potter series. Like tons of others, my tickets were bought weeks in advance, my “Undesirable Number One” shirt was purchased in August, and I masking-taped some 3D-Glasses I poached from Clash of the Titans to make some Harry Potter rims in April. (Coincidentally, those 3D-Glasses were the only thing of value I took away from Clash of the Titans.) With my outfit, my pre-purchased tickets, and my GRE Math Practice Test Book under my arm (seriously, I am such a nerd that I did math while on the line for Harry Potter), I took my place on line for the 12:01AM showing at 10:00PM last night, despite my disdain for the novel.

If my plan was to hate Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 because of my feelings for the original novel, I would have been sorely disappointed. There is no doubt in my mind that Part 1 is the best Harry Potter movie so far, bar none. With an opening scene that grabs hold of your soul and tears out your heart strings like it’s trying to make a wand, epic shots of lonely vistas where Hermione and Harry are hiding, incredible fight scenes, and some non-canon but well done witty dialogue interspersed for some comic relief, Part 1 is the first Harry Potter movie I can think of that got everything right.

The breakout character/actor of the movie is definitely Emma Watson as Hermione Granger. There simply isn’t a scene in the movie where Hermione doesn’t shine more than the two other members of her trio. She’s smarter than your average bear (or 17 year old witch), she’s highly skilled at doing everything, she’s damn powerful, and she’s of strong enough moral fiber to (spoiler alert) erase her parent’s memory that she ever existed so that they cannot be targeted by Death Eaters. Coupled with her beautiful I-would-go-straight-for-her looks, and some incredibly heartwrenching acting when being tortured by Bellatrix Lestrange near the end of the movie, Emma Watson really just made me fall in love with Hermione all over again.

Beyond Hermione, Helena Bonham Carter reprised her role as Bellatrix Lestrange and left us all with chills. She’s my favorite badass evil witch since the Wizard of Oz. Our diminutive friend Dobby took a heroic stand and gave an excellent speech that Harriet Tubman would have clapped at. Tom Felton left us feeling bad for Draco Malfoy, and the three actors who portrayed Harry, Ron, and Hermione after taking Polyjuice Potion and infiltrating the Ministry of Magic all managed to look exceptionally awkward in their own skin.

Most importantly, there was a distinct flow to the movie. They took a book where a good 200 pages were agonizingly drawn out and turned it into a movie where every scene contributed something to the story. The storyline was presented well, it was cohesive, and it was understandable to someone who had never read the books before. (For shame!)

This isn’t to say Part 1 was a perfect movie; it still had some flaws. Ron’s descent from chipper comedic-relief failure to emo “I hate you Harry” mode was so fast the Flash would have been envious. There was some very strange slight sexual tension between Harry and Hermione. Despite the fact that I totally ship this couple, I was slightly grossed out. Kreacher’s rehabilitation was not touched on- he was just presented as oddly nicer to Harry this movie. Mad Eye Moody’s death was barely an afterthought. And, since the movie was so Harry/Ron/Hermione focused, we got to see very little of a lot of the other awesome characters of the series: One 15-second scene with Neville and gang (where Neville is a badass), no McGonagall or any of the other teachers, limited Snape screentime, etc. While this makes sense from a strict interpretation of the books viewpoint, it would have been nice to have a few scene of life at Hogwarts interspersed.

I can’t stress how much I encourage everyone to go out and watch this movie. I don’t believe that waiting for a dvd release of the film will do the lonely vistas and incredible fight scenes justice- they really have to be viewed on the large screen to do them justice. For Harry Potter fans and readers, this movie will conjure up most of the good of the series with limited amounts of the bad. For new watchers, the storyline is interesting and the plot sad enough that you might just be crying by the end. Regardless of which group you fall under, one thing will be certain: When you leave that theater two hours later, you’ll be thinking how July 15th just can’t come fast enough.