Wait, what? do we NEED 9% (Re: Virulence)

[evan_s]

Virulence is just one of those talents all DKs hate, it basically only affects one or two abilities depending on your spec, it wastes 3 talent points on something other melee / spell hybrids (i.e. enh shammies and ret paladins) get for free as part of their spec. It is, by all intents, one of the boring as hell damage increasing talents that were supposed to be gotten rid of.

If talenting for hit was boring how can you justify having to spend three talents to get hit for just one ability as interesting? Yes, the new version is better but it is still a very boring talent that exists solely to make up for some weird artificts of the implementation that prevent all DK abilities from working off of melee hit chance as they should.

It is a talent that in no way affects how you play, you just have one spell in your rotation that misses less.

Anyway I think it is pretty obvious we are going to see no major overhauls to any class this close to launch, so just put up with it I guess .

A slight correction- Enhancement shaman get nothing to help them hit with spells. The Dual Wield skill provided by specializing in Enhancement is Melee hit only and does not affect spell hit. Enhancement shaman just ends up going for the full 17% spell hit cap. Since they also gain some benefit from the Hit on the melee side due to the dual wielding penalty causing white hits to still miss and have a greater portion of their damage as spells the value of hit up to the spell hit cap stays above other stats. The worst thing for Enhancement shaman is the expertise cap. Unfortunately, Hunters, who Enhancement shaman share their not set gear with, have no real need for Expertise so it is extremely rare on Agility gear so gemming for Expertise is frequently needed to hit the dodge cap.

GC has also said that making direct comparisons isn't valid in their opinion. Just because one class gets something for free and another class has to spend talent points for it doesn't make it unfair or a problem. Ultimately it is the sum and total of everything that matters.

[Nyanmaru]

A slight correction- Enhancement shaman get nothing to help them hit with spells. The Dual Wield skill provided by specializing in Enhancement is Melee hit only and does not affect spell hit. Enhancement shaman just ends up going for the full 17% spell hit cap. Since they also gain some benefit from the Hit on the melee side due to the dual wielding penalty causing white hits to still miss and have a greater portion of their damage as spells the value of hit up to the spell hit cap stays above other stats. The worst thing for Enhancement shaman is the expertise cap. Unfortunately, Hunters, who Enhancement shaman share their not set gear with, have no real need for Expertise so it is extremely rare on Agility gear so gemming for Expertise is frequently needed to hit the dodge cap.

GC has also said that making direct comparisons isn't valid in their opinion. Just because one class gets something for free and another class has to spend talent points for it doesn't make it unfair or a problem. Ultimately it is the sum and total of everything that matters.

BTW, Newsflash, the expertise problem on mail was solved by introducing reforging...
Enhancement are using melee hits to proc Maelstrom which is enabling them to do most of their damage. More melee hits = more Maelstrom = more Nukes, they'd still gain some DpS if they went 2% or some over the spell hit cap...

DKs + Ret Paladins are both melees that focusses mostly on weapon strikes and add a bit of "flavor" through the use of magic attacks. They are basically the same.
A) most damage is off weapon attacks
B) minor damage is from spells (Frost Strike or ScS's shadow portion is no spell, Wrath Exo DC and HB are spells)
C) Main ressource (Mana/Runes) is used to generate secondary ressource (Runic/Holy Power) for specials

At this part, a direct comparison is very well valid.

Blizzard wanted to get rid of "mandatory" sub talents but then they put in mandatory talents again.
The only reason this doesn't generate a bigger uproar is that 99% of the Tier 1+2 talents of DKs are next to useless for sub-specs anyhow and people are kinda glad they can put their points into something that should be baseline...

[evan_s]

Reforging definitely makes getting the needed expertise much easier but I can't think of any other dps class that is so heavily dependent on reforging, gemming or enchanting to hit an important cap like that because it is almost completely missing from the appropriate gear. Hitting the spell hit cap is definitely a good idea for an enhancement shaman and does continue to provide enough benefit that hit is clearly the most valuable thing to do but that doesn't change the fact that enhancement shaman don't get any spell hit talents or specializations.

If you don't like GC's opinion, argue with him not me =)