Welcome to this week’s edition of One Man’s Junk. We will be doing something new this time. Analysts have informed me that a new gimmick or hook is necessary every issue in order to retain readers. Apparently, in an era of near instant gratification, attention spans have deteriorated to the point of near non-existence. Good writing just isn’t enough anymore, although it could be argued, quite successfully I might add, that I am not a good writer. But I digress. Allow me to introduce our first Double Feature, featuring Yanna Dai’shalan and Lacerate! I have been working on the Yanna problem for quite awhile now, and in the process have found a new spot in my heart for Lacerate. How did we get from A to B? Well, it began something like this.

As usual, I was doing a basic breakdown of the potential feature mini. Four honor characters all come with a couple of things in common. Really low stats and horrible dice to tick ratios. Yanna is no exception to the rule, however she has two things going for her. Number one, she is Balance specced. That means access to Moonkin Form. This makes Yanna a cheap support character for your favorite beatdown mini. The problem is that her 4 tick 5 dice attack means she is gonna sit out a lot of the match, either because she is ticked up, or because you don’t dare tick her up in case you need her to be able to move around and be a portable Boots of the Crimson Hawk for your more powerful characters. The second thing going for Yanna is that she is a druid. Druids, simply by virtue of being what class they are, are able to set aside garbagy main attacks with a single ABC. Sure, Yanna is Balance, ergo Boomkin, but, in the minis version, there is no inherent disadvantage for her to use a different form entirely. Bear Form and Cat Form really bend the rules for what is permissible for a low honor character. There are only 3 minis of that caliber that have a standard attack of two ticks for 4 dice, and they pay for that damage boost with their stats. Cat Form gets Yanna all that, with an increase in stats. Let’s not forget the bonus from stealth, not to mention an awesome crit. Then you have Bear Form. This is where you really get your money’s worth, as far as I am concerned. Check this out: you can have a four honor character with 2 armor, 2 resist, 7 health, and a 3 tick 5 dice attack, with damage +1 on crits, that has a debuff that potentially rivals Curse of Agony. Sounds like a steal? Oh yeah, let’s throw Taunt in just for kicks and giggles. Coincidentally enough, Yanna’s Nature’s Grasp works beautifully with the whole idea of Bear Form.

Now what was that debuff nonsense I was talking about again? Ah, Lacerate. On the surface Lacerate is merely a glass-half-empty version of Corruption; half the cost, half the damage, a fraction of the range, and Recharge. Ok, now lets look at it with the glass-half-full perspective. It stacks, up to five times. This is the only debuff to date that does that. So with Recharge, the damage steps up like Curse of Agony. The differences between them actually makes them play very differently though. Lacerate is a lot harder to clear with debuff removal. A single Cleanse or Dispell will clear off Curse of Agony. If you have built up a bunch of Lacerates on a single target, each instance of it needs a separate removal, with the exception of Mass Dispell, but who actually uses priests besides me? Lacerate is slower, with each application costing a tick, and only having a range of 1. The other crazy thing about Lacerate stacking is that more than one character can place the debuff on a single enemy. Which leads to this:

Team 1: Bear with me, 12 Honor
Yanna Dai’shalan x3
-Bear Form x3
-Lacerate x3
-Moonkin Form
-Starfire
-Tranquility

Applying lacerate six times in 10 ticks = win, maybe. This is kind of like the old MC setup that everyone was talking about back when Spoils first came out. This has a little more staying power, especially if you opt to use Tranquility to get some heals in. Anything you can get 5 Lacerates on in the first round of the game is going to go down fast, even epics. Sprinkle in a couple of VPs from spots and now your cooking! Speaking of MC:

Team 2: Cauterized Wounds, 12 Honor
Yanna Dai’shalan x2
-Bear Form x2
-Lacerate x2
Marlowe Christophers
-Corruption
-Curse of Agony
-Incinerate
-Piztog
-Hellfire

With all those pretty Lacerates DOTting up everyone I thought it would be fun to give Incinerate a spin. Beef it up with Corruption or Curse of Agony. Or beef up your minis with Piztog. Hellfire pushes through that little bit of extra damage to get the job done.

For this last one I actually posted something similar in the Strategy Forum already. It is possible for a single Morova to apply Lacerate 4 times in 10 ticks. I suppose you could go triple Bear Morova, but I think that the following would be a lot more fun.

Team 3: Moooo, 22 Honor
Morova of the Sands x2
Thangal
-Bear Form x2
-Lacerate x2
-Moonkin Form
-Mana Potion
-Tranquility
-Mark of the Wild
-Cat Form

Thangal and one Morova go Bear. Rerolls for everyone and crits on 9’s. With all those extra cards you can mix it up for each matchup. Maybe double Morova Bear, with Thangal pulling healing and buffing duty. Thanks for reading. Gonna figure out something for next week where we tackle the second most maligned class in the game, rogues. (Wall of Text gains [Crit]: Reader’s brain explodes.)