Inspiration.

***CLASSIFIED***
***AUTHORIZED EYES ONLY***
Transmission ID: 2239-001-A73
Transmission Date: 2073/03/22
Transmission Length: 1:37
---Transmission Text (Dictated)---
(Calm) "I know you're out there. Listening. (Pause) Watching. (Pause) Waiting. I have complete faith this will one day reach you. It may pass through the hands of some of your associates along the way, but that's fine. Just fine. Let them know. Let them ask questions that you can't; no, (w:e) won't answer.

Because, you see, it doesn't matter what you elect to tell them. Soon enough, the whole solar system will know. (Rising agitation) I'll tell every woman, man, child, dog, cat, orphan, politician, (yelling) low life piece of shit scumbag... (distraction; pause) (deep breathing)

(Calm) Most importantly, I'll tell every single person you've ever stepped upon in your miserable, piece of shit life, and I'll make them into an army. Then we'll come for your associates. Your (w:e) friends. Your (w:e) family. We will make them suffer, just as ours do.

(Quiet) Only then, when everything you think you held dear is stripped away, Mr. Doe, will I begin my personal vengeance upon you.

---Transmission Termination---

Apparently, Dual Wielding is actually pretty good when you do it right.

I was not happy about Blizzard's changes to the Frost tree, supporting dual-wielding over 2Handed. I did not like how they gutted Frost Strike and the Vengeful Heart sigil, making them both worthless for two handed frost users and basically destroying my favourite spec.

However, I like to think I'm adaptable, and prepared for the change. I picked up some decent 1 handed weapons, a lot of Armor Penetration gear, and figured I could either go 2 handed Blood or dual wield.

At first, I tried dual-wielding. I was not impressed. I had heard great things about the Glyph of Disease spec, the first spec that was capable of actually using the glyph without a significant DPS loss. I found it unwieldy, clunky, and prone to mishap. You had a one to two second window to refresh your diseases, and even just standing on a target dummy I found myself missing it by a fraction of a second. I can't imagine running that spec on a movement heavy fight, such as Mimiron or Vezax.

Next I tried the Unholy version of DW. It's a strange spec, and one I expect to be nerfed eventually. Typically, Unholy uses Scourge Strike as its main 'nuke' strike. This spec, however, utilizes Obliterate, which is supposed to be Frost's nuke strike. It supposedly works well, but for some reason I wasn't able to produce results with it. The most appealing thing about the Unholy spec is the bonus run speed (optional), and the permanent ghoul pet. The latter is both a plus and a negative, however, since there are fights he's prone to die on, forcing you to lose a significant amount of damage.

Failing those two, I went to two-handed Blood for a few days, and loved it. The gear ratings worked out very well, too. I had perfect hit rating, slightly above cap on expertise, and 4500 attack power unbuffed, not to mention a shit load of Armor Penetration. Best of all, I was able to solo instances I couldn't before. Heroic Shadow Labs, Heroic Magister's Terrace, and Zul'Gurub are the notable ones I solo'd while Blood spec.

However, people kept saying that dual-wield was doing extremely well. Begrudgingly, I tried it again. This time, I decided to pick up a spec that more closely resembled the rotation I used while two-handed Frost, simply to make the transition easier. Before I made the change though, I ran some Test Dummy runs with my Blood spec, so I could have something to compare my results with.

As two handed Blood, over a course of 10 minutes, I could sustain an average of 3700 DPS, with spikes upwards of 3850.

My first attempt at dual-wield, a five minute dummy test, produced a result of 2800 average DPS, with no notable spikes.

Pretty lackluster, and was about to give up again when I noticed something strange - not a single Rime proc happened in five minutes. That's pretty odd, since Rime has a 15% proc off of Obliterate, and I Obliterate four times every 20 seconds. That led me to my stupid, stupid, stupid error.

I was still using Death Strike as my F/U strike. Thinking back to when I tried the other Dual-Wield specs, and I'm near positive I was doing the exact same thing.

So... after a quick swap of my hotkeys, I tried again.

Over a ten minute parse, recount showed my Dual-Wield spec at 3800 average DPS with spikes upwards of 4100. This is with weapons of lower iLevel than my two-handed axe, no longer expertise capped, and 700 lower attack power than my Blood spec.

Ummm... I'm thinking I'll be dual-wielding in the future. Now I just need to farm some quality weapons.

From the head Developer's desk.

What I'm about to post has been smuggled out of Blizzard headquarters. Many Bothans died to bring us this information. It's in regards to the 10 man raid instance that's to bridge the gap between the Argent Coliseum and Icecrown.

And yes, it's a troll raid.

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Dear Dev Team:

It's time to make an executive decision on the direction that our raid for path 3.3 will be. We already know that patch 3.1 will be Ulduar, 3.2 will be the Coliseum, and Icecrown won't be ready for another few months after that. We will need something in between 3.2 and Icecrown to hold the players over. Something quick to whip up and without any real substance.

I think it's time for another troll raid. We already have all the textures; we'll simply recycle them from the other troll raids we've abused over the years. We'll put it where Gun'drak is, but call it something confusing. Like 'Zul'Gun', or 'Gun'Gurub'. Part of the time sink will be the players simply wondering which damned instance they're supposed to be heading towards. Genious!

Next we need a theme. The players are tired of the 'One badass boss siphoning the aspects of blah blah blah' shit that we've done in Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman. Let's make it a little bit more low key... like, a Village or something. Maybe the Trolls are simply trying to rebuild their ancestral home and have a nice place to live. Let's go with that for a moment.

For bosses, we can have various worker types. For instance, 'Constable Troll' will be the head of security. You have to defeat him first so the rest of the trolls aren't alerted to your presence right away. Maybe this stops the patrols from ganking the raid while they try to make delicate pulls. 'Constable Troll' has a nightstick that he saps random raid members with.

Next, we can have 'Construction Troll'. He's over in the unfinished wing of the instance, where the trolls are trying to put up new walls or something. 'Construction Troll' can be a ranged fight, where he stands atop a brick wall and hurls materials down upon the raid. Melee have to beat their heads against a wall to bring him down. For shits and giggles, let's give the wall spikey bits to represent a damage reflection so that they kill themselves attacking it.

We can flesh out the other bosses later. I'm thinking ideas out loud now, something like 'Old Western Troll', 'Rides Around on a Motorcycle Troll', 'Casino Operator Troll', and 'Army General Troll.'

The final boss can be Mayor Troll. He needs to have a bullshit, goofy mechanic to piss off the raiders. I know! We'll divide his platform into four coloured areas. Well use similar colours, like... Yellow, Mauve, Crimson, and Auburn. Four players will need to be dedicated to standing in a particular colour, and do some stupid emote when the boss enrages. Like, /dance. That'd be good. And they have to dance in a particular order!

Then, we'll have each dance do something special. Like, the person standing in the Yellow part will throw his arms up in the air. Auburn will make himself into a form of pyramid. Things like that.

So, that's where we're headed. Any questions?