February 28, 2009

Warlock item: The soulblade

We said we'd do a Warlock item: the soulblade this week, so here you go.

Name: The Soulblade ( Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDigger)

Type: Epic Main-hand Dagger

Damage/Speed: 87-258 / 1.80 (96.0 DPS)

Attributes:

  • +39 Stamina, +44 Intellect, +42 Spirit

  • And yes, that Spirit makes this about as Warlock as daggers come, nowadays.

  • Since all of the spellpower changes, caster and healer loot seems to be mixed up quite a bit -- almost anyone can use almost any of the nicest loot at the top. But Warlocks need Stamina, which this knife has, to Life Tap life away from, and they're also big fans of Spirit as well. You might have to make the case on a roll for this one, but combined with the name of the item, this is a Warlock dagger.

  • Improves hit rating by 30, which doesn't hurt either, especially for Affliction Warlocks.

  • Increases spell power by 481. 'Nuff said.

  • And provides 576 Feral Attack Power. Which doesn't matter much to Druids -- this is not a weapon you'd actually want to go feral with -- but just shows that Blizzard is covering their bases with Feral AP.

How to Get It: Drops from KT, and not Kael'thas (remember him? I'm kind of surprised he hasn't made another reappearance in Wrath yet). Nope, it's Kel'thuzad, at the very end of 10-man Naxxramas. Roll your guild up through all of the bosses, make it past the Safety Dance and Sapphiron, drop the original big bad of vanilla WoW , and with a 15% or so chance, this dagger is yours.

To roll on, anyway. Like I said, you'll probably have to fight off a few other casters. But that's what that Fear spell is for, right?

Getting Rid of It: Disenchants into, you guessed it, an Abyss Crystal. Sells back to vendors for 21g 73s 15c.

Patch 3.1 PTR Priest glyph changes

One of the things Patch 3.1 is supplying in spades is glyphs and glyph changes. Every class is getting a ton of them, and it's really hard to keep up with them there are so many. Priests are coming out alright so far through the whole process, with a lot of our current glyphs being improved and our new glyphs being legitimately useful, if situational. Let's see what's new, shall we?

Glyph of Fade - Reduces the cooldown of your Fade spell by 9 sec. (Old: Increases the duration and cooldown of your Fade spell by 50%.)

This is massively better than what it was previously, and I suspect that this will become a popular Shadow Priest glyph in PvP. Two points in Veiled Shadows plus this glyph means a 15 second cooldown on Fade. Every 15 seconds, a Shadow Priest will be able to clear all movement impairing effects, assuming they have Improved Shadowform. That's pretty friggin' sweet.

Glyph of Psychic Scream - Increases the duration of your Psychic Scream by 2 sec. and increases its cooldown by 8 sec. (Old: Increases the duration of your Psychic Scream by 1 sec.)

I don't think anybody used this glyph previously, and I don't expect that'll change any. The previous version is arguably better because it doesn't increase the cooldown on one of your primary escape tools, even if the increase is smaller. Bad glyph remains bad.

Glyph of Fear Ward - Reduces cooldown and duration of Fear Ward by 60 sec. (Old: 30 sec.)

This is a glyph that I imagine we'll see used, if only situationally. One of those glyphs you'll slot in just for a single boss encounter in a raid setting. Typically you'll use Fear Ward right before you want it to Ward a Fear, so the duration hardly matters. Reducing the cooldown is the good part. This would bring the cooldown to 2 minutes rather than 3. Maybe Ulduar will have a Fear-heavy encounter? Tremor Totems definitely trump Fear Ward in a raid setting through, so we may not actually see any use out of this Glyph anyway. Still, it's a straight buff that makes the glyph a little stronger for what it is.

Glyph of Inner Fire - Increases the armor from your Inner Fire spell by 50%. (Old: Increases the charges on your Inner Fire spell by 20.)

This glyph would supply an extra 1220 Armor while Inner Fire is up, which is a pretty substantial buff to the spell. It does mean that you need to continue to babysit Inner Fire again, but players have been doing that successfully for a long time already. I'll take the armor bonus, thanks! This is going to be great for all specs in PvP, because Inner Fire is just a massive part of our defense, and this makes it even better. Fantastic.

Glyph of Mind Control -- Reduces the chance targets will resist or break your Mind Control spell by an additional 17%. (Old - Increases the duration of your Mind Control spell by 30 sec.)

Glyph of Mind Control? More like Glyph of Healing Priests Fighting Razuvious. This is another situational glyph like the new Glyph of Fear Ward. A Holy or Disc Priest will toss it on when they're doing something that requires Mind Control, but it will otherwise see very little use. I'm a pretty big fan of this glyph, actually. It would've been nice if it were there at launch, but better late than never, gith?

Glyph of Smite -- Your Smite spell inflicts an additional 20% damage against targets afflicted by Holy Fire. (Old - Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Smite by 100%.)

I'm not sure the new version of this glyph will see much use considering the addition of Dual Specs. I suppose that there's a portion of the Priest playerbase that likes leveling as Holy or Discipline, but that's pretty niche. I guess we'll see those few diehard Holy players who absolutely will not spec Shadow to quest or level using this, but that's the extent of it.

Glyph of Dispersion - Your Dispersion ability now also clears movement impairing effects and makes you immune to them for its duration.

This is a baseline component of the spell now (as of patch 3.1), so this glyph is probably going to change sometime soon. Maybe it even has changed already and I haven't seen that yet. Boy, wouldn't I look silly?

Glyph of Guardian Spirit (new) - If you Guardian Spirit lasts its entire duration without being triggered, your Guardian Spirit cooldown is reset to 60 sec.

Hmm. I like the idea of this glyph, but I don't know how many people will actually use it. It's a solid concept, but will Priests glyph an ability that's on a 3 minute cooldown? I don't think they will, even if it will guarantee getting more use out of something as powerful as Guardian Spirit. More likely they'd prefer to glyph their bread and butter abilities, rather than the toaster.

I don't think that made sense, but let's pretend it did.

Glyph of Penance (new) - Reduces the cooldown of Penance by 2 sec.

Anything that lets a Discipline Priest cast Penance more completely rules, in my opinion. It's such a great spell. Even if a lower cooldown messes up some wonky rotation that some Priests think they've worked out, having Penance off cooldown more often is a beautiful thing. Even if you don't use it every single cooldown, having it available is fantastic. I think we're going to see a lot of Discipline Priests with this glyph.

Glyph of Mind Sear (new) - Increases the radius of effect on Mind Sear by 5 yards.

This is another situational one, I'll bet. Mind Sear is a powerhouse spell on its own, but only in situations where there is heavy AOE, obviously. Shadow Priests will use this on AOE/add based boss fights, but I don't think you'll see it as part of their usual arsenal. They'll stock up on them, switch it in for a boss, then afterwards go back to their usual glyphs. Really though, only min-maxing Priests will do that, because it's like burning money. Stocking up on all sorts of different glyphs just for one or two encounters is crazy crazy crazy. We may not see very widespread use of these situational glyphs.

Glyph of Pain Suppression (new) - Allows Pain Suppression to be cast while stunned.

This will see a lot of use in PvP, but none in PvE, for obvious reasons. This is actually probably one of those glyphs that will see a lot of use in early arena seasons, but will slowly taper off in the higher seasons when the Priest can easily survive a stunlock without it. Only time will tell.

Glyph of Mass Dispel -- Reduces the mana cost of Mass Dispel by 50%.

If this were a Minor Glyph, I could see every Priest using it. Since it's a Major Glyph, very few Priests will use it. Pretty simple to see, I think. It just doesn't have enough kick to be worth a Major slot with all of the other options out there.

Glyph of Scourge Imprisonment -- Reduces the cast time of your Shackle Undead by 0.5 sec. (Old - Increases the chance of success for your Shackle Undead spell by 8%.)

Cool concept, but I don't foresee it being used at all until the next big Undead-centric raid zone. Icecrown, probably. It also needs to be a minor glyph, not a major glyph. Making it a Major glyph just guarantees it won't get used, because its only real use is for CCing trash in a dungeon or a Death Knight who thinks they're slick. That doesn't justify using a Major slot for this glyph. Not at all. It needs to be a minor glyph, or made way, way more awesome.

And that's most of them... for now. There's potentially a few I missed, and many of these will likely change in future iterations of the patch on the PTR. Glyphs are one of those things that are changing constantly over the course of a Test Realm period, so don't get your heart set on any of these, and don't rage out either. We'll try to keep up with the changes as best we can, but holy cow are there a lot of changes.

Patch 3.1 PTR Patch Notes update

The official patch notes have been updated for the Patch 3.1 PTR. You can see a complete list of changes after the break, or take a look at the fully updated notes.

This update is much more substantial than the one we posted a couple nights ago. Nonetheless, it has been added to our Patch 3.1 patch notes archive. Via the archive you can also view other iterations of the patch notes to see how things have changed.

As always, these notes should be considered incomplete (it's in bold because we can't say it enough). A number of things that are on the PTR are not reflected in the patch notes, and several things that will eventually be on the PTR aren't in the notes either (many of the class changes, for example).

General

  • New high-resolution player textures for Northrend armor sets have been added. Players can enable this feature by setting Player Textures to High in the Effects Panel of the Video Options.

  • Players can now return items purchased with an alternate currency back to the original vendor within 2 hours of the purchase time for the original cost of the item. Stackable items (such as Frozen Orbs and gems) and charged items that can be purchased with an alternate currency are not eligible.

  • Confirmation boxes have been added to purchases over 150 gold.

  • Copied Test Realm characters will no longer be copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

Death Knight

Blood



  • Abomination's Might: This effect can now also be caused by Death Strike.
  • Magic Suppression: Now has 3 ranks (down from 5) for 2/4/6% magic damage reduction.

  • New talent: Improved Death Strike. Increases Death Strike damage by 10/20.

  • Outbreak: Increases the damage of Plague Strike by 15/30/45% and Scourge Strike by 10/20/30%. Scourge Strike: Damage increased.


Druid


  • Lifebloom: Mana cost of all ranks doubled. When Lifebloom blooms or is dispelled, it now refunds half the base mana cost of the spell per application of Lifebloom, and the heal effect is multiplied by the number of applications.

  • Maim: This ability is now considered a stun, and shares a diminish category with all other stuns. It no longer has a chance to break from the target taking damage. Duration lowered to 1 sec. per combo point.
  • Heart of the Wild: Stamina bonus changed to 2/4/6/8/10%.
  • Intensity: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting.

Hunters


  • Ammunition: All types of gun and bow ammunition now stack to 1000. All quivers and ammo pouches no longer provide haste. 15% ranged haste is now built in to Hunter Autoshot.

  • Call Stabled Pet: This new ability lets the hunter remotely access the stable. 30 min cooldown.

  • Cunning, Ferocity and Tenacity pets now all have +5% damage, +5% armor and +5% health bonuses. This should make more pet families feel viable, while additional talents have been added to distinguish a pet's abilities based on its specializations.

  • Disengage: Cooldown increased by 5 sec.

  • Pets now inherit more spell hit from the hunter. Pets with magic attacks should not require a player to stack additional hit compared to pets with physical attacks.

  • Viper Sting re-designed: Stings the target, draining 4% of mana over 8 sec (up to a maximum of 8% of the caster's maximum mana), and energizing the Hunter equal to 300% of the amount drained. Only one Sting per Hunter can be active on any one target.

  • Explosive Shot: Base damage lowered by 10%. Attack power scaling reduced by 12.5%.
Hunter Pets

  • Bullheaded now adds 20% damage reduction for 12 sec along with its current CC-removal effect.

  • Cornered: The crit reduction when this ability is active has been increased.

  • Feeding Frenzy increased to 8/16% damage up from 6/12%.

  • Furious Howl (wolf special ability) now stacks with Battle Shout and Blessing of Might, however, it only affects the wolf and hunter. Its effect and cooldown have been doubled so that it provides the same benefit but isn't up 100% of the time.

  • Gorillas now have a new family ability, Pummel, which works like the warrior ability and has a single rank.

  • Grace of the Mantis and Roar of Sacrifice are now also available to Cunning pets.

  • New Talent: Shark Attack: This new two-rank talent is available to Ferocity pets. It increases pet damage.

  • New Talent: Silverback: This new two-rank talent is available to Tenacity pets. It heals the pet when Growl is used.

  • New Talent: Wild Hunt: This new two-rank talent is available to all 3 pet trees. It increases the stamina and attack power inherited from the hunter.

  • Roar of Recovery cooldown decreased to 3 min, down from 6 min.

  • Thunderstomp is no longer a gorilla-specific family ability and is now available to all Tenacity pets. It has been reduced to one rank.

Mage

  • Mage Armor: Now grants 50% of mana regeneration while casting.
  • Arcane Meditation: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting.

  • Pyromaniac: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting.

Paladin

  • Improved Concentration Aura: The resistance to silence and interrupt granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Concentration Aura.

  • Improved Devotion Aura: The additional healing granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Devotion Aura.

  • Divine Protection: Cooldown reduced to 3 min.

  • Sanctified Retribution: The bonus to damage done granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Retribution Aura.

Priest
  • Meditation and Improved Power: Word shield have changed locations with each other.

  • Meditation: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting

  • Renewed Hope: This talent also now allows you to proc the Renewed Hope buff on all party/raid members every time you cast Power Word: Shield, reducing damage taken by 3%. Lasts 20 sec.

  • Psychic Horror: Has been redesigned and is now a 1-pt talent. You terrify the target, causing them to tremble in horror for 3 sec. and drop all weapons (disarm effect: including bows) for 10 sec. 1 minute cooldown. Instant cast. The horror effect can be dispelled, but the disarm cannot.

  • Improved Spirit Tap: Now grants 17/33% of mana regeneration while casting.

  • Spirit Tap: Now grants 83% of mana regeneration while casting.


Rogue

  • Shiv: This ability can no longer generate a critical strike, and the poisons it applies cannot be critical strikes either.

Shaman

Enhancement

  • Unleashed Rage: Reduced to 3 points, down from 5. Each point now also increases your total Expertise by 3/6/9%.


Warlock

  • Drain Soul: Each time Drain Soul deals damage to a target which can grant experience, it now has a chance to generate a Soul Shard.

  • Soul Shard: This item now has a maximum count of 32 in inventory.

Warrior

  • Charge: Duration of stun effect now lasts 1.5 sec. This effect no longer has diminishing returns.
  • Last Stand: Cooldown reduced to 3 min.

User Interface


  • Spell Effect Level setting has been split into Particle Density and Projected Textures. Previously, Spell Effect Level controlled both of these features.

  • Added new Video Mode Ultra (should only be used on the highest-end systems).


Items

  • Hearthstone: Cooldown has been reduced to 30 min. down from 60 min.

Glyphs


Death Knight
  • Glyph of Blood Boil: Now only applies a snare to diseased targets.

  • Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon: Increases the duration of Dancing Rune Weapon by 10 sec.

  • Glyph of Death Coil: Reduces the cost of Death Coil by 8 runic power.

  • Glyph of Disease: Your Pestilence ability now refreshes disease durations on your primary target back to their maximum duration.

  • Glyph of Howling Blast: Your Howling Blast ability now infects your targets with Frost Fever.

  • Glyph of Hungering Cold: Reduces the cost of Hungering Cold by 10 runic power.

  • Glyph of Plague Strike: Bonus lowered to 20%.

  • Glyph of Unholy Blight: Increases the duration of Unholy Blight by 10 sec.


Druid
  • Glyph of Berserk: Increases the duration of Berserk by 5 sec

  • Monsoon Glyph: Reduces the cooldown of your Typhoon spell by 3 sec.

  • Glyph of Nourish: Your Nourish heals an additional 6% for each of your heal over time effects present on the target.

  • Glyph of Savage Roar: Your Savage Roar ability grants an additional 6% bonus damage done.

  • Glyph of Wild Growth: Wild Growth now affects up to 6 targets.

  • Glyph of Shred: Now increases remaining duration on Rip by 2 sec. each time it is used, up to a maximum of 6 sec.


Hunter

  • Glyph of Chimera Shot: Reduces the cooldown of Chimera Shot by 1 sec.

  • Glyph of Explosive Shot: Increases the critical strike chance of Explosive Shot by 4%.

  • Glyph of Explosive Trap: The periodic damage from your Explosive Trap can now be critical strikes.

  • Glyph of Kill Shot: Reduces the cooldown of Kill Shot by 6 sec.

  • Glyph of Raptor Strike: For 3 sec. after using Raptor Strike, you take 20% less damage.

  • Glyph of Scatter Shot: Increases the range of Scatter Shot by 3 yards.


Mage

  • Glyph of Arcane Barrage: Reduces the mana cost of Arcane Barrage by 20%.

  • Glyph of Deep Freeze: Increases the range of Deep Freeze by 10 yards.

  • Glyph of Ice Barrier: Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your Ice Barrier by 30%.

  • Glyph of Living Bomb: The periodic damage from your Living Bomb can now be critical strikes.

  • Glyph of Mirror Image: Your Mirror Images gain the Winter's Chill talent, granting their Frostbolt spell a 100% chance to apply the Winter's Chill effect, which increases the chance spells will critically hit the target by 1% for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.


Paladin

  • Glyph of Beacon of Light: Increases the duration of Beacon of Light by 30 sec.

  • Glyph of Divine Plea: While Divine Plea is active, you take 3% reduced damage from all sources.

  • Glyph of Divine Storm: Your Divine Storm now heals for an additional 15% of the damage it causes.

  • Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous: Your Hammer of the Righteous hits 1 additional target.

  • Glyph of Hand of Salvation: When you cast Hand of Salvation on yourself, it also reduces damage taken by 20%.

  • Glyph of Holy Shock: Reduces the cooldown of Holy Shock by 1 sec.

  • Glyph of Shield of Righteousness: Reduces the mana cost of Shield of Righteousness by 80%.

Priest

  • Glyph of Dispersion: Reduces the cooldown on Dispersion by 45 sec.

  • Glyph of Fade: Now reduces cooldown by 9 sec.

  • Glyph of Guardian Spirit: If you Guardian Spirit lasts its entire duration without being triggered, your Guardian Spirit cooldown is reset to 60 sec.

  • Glyph of Holy Light: Can no longer crit and has had its range updated.

  • Glyph of Hymn of Hope: Your Hymn of hope provides 2 times the normal amount of mana per time, but its duration is 50% shorter.

  • Glyph of Mind Sear: Increases the radius of effect on Mind Sear by 5 yards.

  • Glyph of Pain Suppression: Allows Pain Suppression to be cast while stunned.

  • Glyph of Penance: Reduces the cooldown of Penance by 2 sec.


Rogue

  • Glyph of Backstab: Now increases remaining duration on Rupture by 2 sec. each time it is used, up to a maximum of 6 sec.

  • Glyph of Cloak of Shadows: While Cloak of Shadows is active, you take 40% less physical damage.

  • Glyph of Fan of Knives: Increases the damage done by Fan of Knives by 20%.

  • Glyph of Hunger for Blood: Increases the bonus damage from Hunger For Blood by 3%.

  • Glyph of Killing Spree: Reduces the cooldown on Killing Spree by 45 sec.

  • Glyph of Mutilate: Reduces the cost of Mutilate by 5 energy.

  • Glyph of Shadow Dance: Increases the duration of Shadow Dance by 4 sec.

  • Glyph of Sprint: No longer reduces the duration.

  • Glyph of Tricks of the Trade: Your Tricks of the Trade grants an additional 10% bonus damage to your target.


Shaman

  • Glyph of Earth Shield: Increases the amount healed by your Earth Shield by 20%.

  • Glyph of Feral Spirit: Your spirit wolves gain an additional 30% of your attack power.

  • Glyph of Hex: Increases the damage your Hex target can take before the Hex effect is removed by 20%.

  • Glyph of Riptide: Increases the duration of Riptide by 3 sec.

  • Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem: Your Stoneclaw Totem also places a damage absorb shield on you, equal to 4 times the strength of the shield it places on your totems.

  • Glyph of Thunder: Reduces the cooldown on Thunderstorm by 7 sec.

  • Glyph of Totem of Wrath: When you cast Totem of Wrath, you gain 30% of the totem's bonus spell power for 5 min.


Warlock

  • Glyph of Chaos Bolt: Reduces the cooldown on Chaos Bolt by 2 sec.

  • Glyph of Demonic Circle: Reduces the cooldown on Demonic Circle by 4 sec.

  • Glyph of Haunt: The bonus damage granted by your Haunt spell is increased by an additional 3%.

  • Glyph of Life Tap: When you use Life Tap, you gain 20% of your spirit as spell power for 20 sec.

  • Glyph of Metamorphosis: Increases the duration of your Metamorphosis by 6 sec.

  • Glyph of Shadowflame: Your Shadowflame also applies a 70% movement speed slow on its victims.

  • Glyph of Soul Link: Increases the percentage of damage shared via your Soul Link by an additional 5%.


Warrior

  • Glyph of Bladestorm: Reduces the cooldown on Bladestorm by 15 sec.

  • Glyph of Enraged Regeneration: Your Enraged Regeneration ability heals for an additional 10% of your health over its duration.

  • Glyph of Last Stand: Now reduces the cooldown of Last Stand by 90 sec.

  • Glyph of Shield Wall: Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%.

  • Glyph of Shockwave: Reduces the cooldown on Shockwave by 3 sec.

  • Glyph of Spell Reflection: Reduces the cooldown on Spell Reflection by 1 sec.

  • Glyph of Vigilance: Your Vigilance ability transfers an additional 5% of your target's threat to you.


Bug Fixes

  • Leaving a group while in an instance will now port you to the nearest graveyard rather than your Hearthstone location.

  • Mace of Unending Life is correctly a 2H weapon.

Death Knight
  • Dancing Rune Weapon: Fixed a bug making it trigger an unusual number of effects from the weapon equipped by the Death Knight. In addition, it will now only echo Death Knight spells whose primary purpose is dealing damage. Also corrected a bug making the effect last 8 seconds longer than intended.

Hunter
  • Savage Rend (raptor special ability): Fixed a tooltip error to correctly note this ability boosts damage rather than attack power.

WoW Patch 3.1 shuts down the Iron Council

After players got a taste of Hodir yesterday, Blizzard earlier opened up another Ulduar boss encounter on the Patch 3.1 PTR. The Iron Council were ready and waiting for raiders eager to have a shot at them -- and as you can see from the screenshot above, they don't look like pushovers. However, numerous crashes and related problems prevented full testing of the encounter, and Blizzard shut down Ulduar testing for the meantime. We had some of our team from WoW Insider who tried to take a crack at the Iron Council but were repelled by various iterations of server fail.

[UPDATE: According to some reports, well-known raiding guilds Death & Taxes, Method, and Fusion all managed to stay inside Ulduar for some time after Blizzard booted everyone else out of the instance. This is sort of expected, considering Blizzard wanted to truly test the encounter -- numerous players formed 2-man raids just to be able to enter Ulduar, thus maxing out the instance limit.]

Players who can't get on the PTR or who have similarly given up in frustration because the world server isn't exactly in the stablest of conditions, you can live the encounters vicariously through the streaming video of other intrepid players such as the folks from Rawrcast or Thelastrace on Justin TV. You mileage may vary. In the meantime, you can enjoy the screenshots of the encounter below. We guarantee they won't crash.

WoW Master of Alterac Valley

It's Alterac Valley weekend once again, and although you can't currently use the Alterac Valley Marks of Honor for anything other than old world rewards right now, the Battleground still remains one of the best places to farm Honor. In case you're hitting up the frozen valley this weekend, here's a handy guide that should help you through the Achievements you need to get Master of Alterac Valley.

Alterac Valley Veteran
Win 100 games. I don't know about you, but I personally don't enjoy Alterac Valley enough to slog through the number of games required to win 100 times. That's probably because of my Battlegroup, where I find myself losing more than I win. Like all veteran Achievements, this really is just a matter of time, and the only real problem is finding yourself on the losing faction -- which tends to be a trend in many Battlegroups unlike other maps, which are largely symmetrical. Alterac Valley is asymmetrical, so a Battlegroup with a faction that knows how to take advantage of the asymmetry will tend to win most of the time. I'll peg this one at hard, and I think some of you will agree.
Difficulty: Hard

Alterac Grave Robber
This is ridiculously easy because it doesn't require you to actually capture or convert the flag, just tag it. During the course of one game, there'll be many opportunities for you to do so. Snowfall Graveyard, the uncontrolled graveyard at the start of the game, is an excellent target that can be taken over and over.
Difficulty: Easy

Tower Defense
Retake 50 Towers. This isn't quite as easy as taking graveyards, as smart opponents will always leave defenders at a tower to protect the flag until the tower is destroyed. Most of the time, you'll need some assistance, who in turn will also try to retake the tower. Tower defense also works with a four minute timer, so there isn't a lot of room to keep trying if you die to the tower's defenders. Fortunately, it also happens that many players are idiots who tend to leave towers undefended or just leave one person to do the job. With these two extremes in mind, it shouldn't be too hard to accomplish over time.
Difficulty: Moderate

Loyal Defender
Kill 50 players in your General's room. Since this is counted over time, this isn't too hard to do. Simply defend every now and then, preferably with some help, and you're guaranteed to rack up some Honorable Kills by your General's side. In all likelihood, your General will be doing the killing for you, too. This Achievement can be unlocked with a few games, whether you win or lose.
Difficulty: Easy

Everything Counts
Win while controlling both mines. This is another easy task as many players tend to ignore the mines. Over the course of 100 games, you're certain to get this Achievement. You can make it easier by capturing one or two mines yourself, or mentioning it casually in Battleground chat where some players will take the cue and do the job for you.
Difficulty: Easy

The Alterac Blitz
Win in 6 minutes. Now this is hard. The only way to win in six minutes is to rush the General, complete with all his lieutenants. This means you will have adds, as well as a General who has higher health and hits harder than usual. You will also not have control of the nearest Graveyard, which means that players who die during this rush will spawn all the way back at the starting point. This means you will have one and only one shot of doing this every game, and you're unlikely to do it with a PUG. You will need a well-geared tank, dedicated healers, and enough crazy DPS to burn the General down before he or his lackeys start wiping you. Throw in the monkeywrench of enemy players trying to be Loyal Defenders, and you've got your work cut out for you.
Difficulty: Hard

The Sickly Gazelle
Kill someone in the Field of Strife before they dismount. Ah, yes, one of my favorite Achievements ever. This Achievement was put in the game to prevent players from trying to escape combat while staying mounted in Alterac Valley. Yet many players still stubbornly stay mounted, making things a lot easier. Note that you do not need to make the killing blow in order to get this, so hanging out at the Field of Strife will eventually lead to this Achievement.
Difficulty: Easy

Frostwolf Perfection / Stormpike Perfection
Win without losing your towers or captain. Here's another difficult one, albeit quite doable with a PUG. The idea is to simply play solid defense. As long as you luck out on a group that's dedicated to keeping all your resources alive, it usually will translate to a win. I won't go so far as to say that you'll get this eventually in 100 games, but with a concerted effort, it's certainly within reach. Because towers can be retaken, the only resource you'll need to protect with more tenacity is your captain.
Difficulty: Hard

Alterac Valley All-Star
In one game, assault and defend a graveyard and tower, and kill someone in the Field of Strife. This is a really fun Achievement where a lot of things can go awry. While it's conceivably easier to assault a graveyard and tower (simply take the first ones you get to), it's a little trickier to get them back. Having a teleporting trinket will help you here, so hope some enemies ninja the towers or graveyards near your base. One of the more conscious efforts on this list of Achievements.
Difficulty: Hard

Frostwolf Howler / Stormpike Battle Charger
Obtain an Alterac Valley mount. This is a retroactive Achievement, so players who already had the mount before 3.0 get this automatically. Otherwise, these can be purchased with 50 Alterac Valley Marks of Honor, which you'll pick up along the way to 100 wins. Since there's nothing else you can do with the marks at the moment, it's pretty much a no-brainer. Besides, both mounts look pretty pimp.
Difficulty: Easy

Hero of the Frostwolf Clan / Hero of the Stormpike Guard
Get exalted with the Frostwolf Clan or Stormpike Guard. Compared to either Arathi Basin or Warsong Gulch, Alterac Valley reputation is ridiculously easy. Many old school players will get this retroactively, but newer players have nothing to worry about. Killing the enemy General alone is worth 389 Reputation, Captains give 125 Reputation, destroying a tower is worth 64 Reputation, and killing players is worth 1 Reputation each.

There are also numerous repeatable quests such as turn-ins of hides or armor scraps, as well as guards who grant 5 Reputation until you hit Revered. To top it all off, bonus Reputation is awarded at the end of a match for certain conditions such as having a Captain still up (125 Reputation) or towers destroyed (25 Reputation each). So while other Battleground reputations are a pain to grind, Alterac Valley reputation rises whether you win or lose, making every game relatively worthwhile.
Difficulty: Easy

To the Looter Go the Spoils
Loot an Autographed Picture of Foror & Tigule. This is probably this meta-Achievement's equivalent of Be Mine!, as it's completely random. The gray item is also the zone's rarest drop, making looting it purely a matter of luck. The idea is to loot everything including enemy players and hope for the best. Note that the Achievement calls for it to be actually looted, so even though the item isn't soulbound, it cannot be traded or bought off the Auction House to get the Achievement. Good luck!
Difficulty: Hard

The Master of Alterac Valley is part of the Battlemaster meta-Achievement, and requires a bit of dedication to do in comparison to some other Battleground metas. The difficulty also lies in the fact that it's harder to form a premade for Alterac Valley considering it's a 40-man Battleground. That said, the Honor gain from Alterac Valley is pretty considerable, making this Battleground grind often worth it.

February 26, 2009

WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Build 9626 Patch Notes Changes

A new Patch 3.1 PTR build is out tonight, build #9626. This build adds some changes and brings a few undocumented changes into their proper documented status.

And with this new build, we're going to try something new here at WoW Insider. Each time the patch notes change, we'll bring you a listing of significant changes to them.

What's a significant change?

Non-grammatical, there are grammar and spelling errors in the patch notes. While people might like to make fun of them, they're not of any consequence. Non-contextual, sometimes the context of a note changes but doesn't really make any difference. Something like a Shield Bash change moved from the Arms tree (where it was mistakenly placed) to the Protection tree (where it belongs). Non-formatting, often times the format of the patch notes will change. This includes things like using ":" or "-" in the appropriate places. These don't concern us. Sometimes the new changes to the patch notes will just be undocumented things becoming documented. But that's important to know too.
So after the break you'll see our first go at this. A complete list of the changes from the initial Patch 3.1 PTR build to PTR build #9626. You can also view the fully updated notes, and view an archive of previous iterations of the patch notes.

Enjoy!

Removed

Death Knight:

New talent: Improved Death Strike. Increases Death Strike damage by 10/20.
Please note that while it is removed in the patch notes, it is reportedly still on the PTR.

Added:

Death Kngiht:

Outbreak: Increases the damage of Plague Strike by 15/30/45% and Scourge Strike by 10/20/30%.

Druid:

Maim: This ability is now considered a stun, and shares a diminish category with all other stuns. It no longer has a chance to break from the target taking damage. Intensity: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting.

Hunter:

Disengage: Cooldown increased by 5 sec.

Mage:

Mage Armor: Now grants 50% of mana regeneration while casting. Talents
Arcane
Arcane Meditation: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting.
Fire
Pyromaniac: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting.

Paladin:

Improved Concentration Aura: The resistance to silence and interrupt granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Concentration Aura. Improved Devotion Aura: The additional healing granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Devotion Aura. Sanctified Retribution: The bonus to damage done granted by this talent now becomes active when any Aura is used, not just Retribution Aura.

Priest:

Meditation and Improved Power: Word shield have changed locations with each other. Meditation: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting Improved Spirit Tap: Now grants 17/33% of mana regeneration while casting. Spirit Tap: Now grants 83% of mana regeneration while casting.

Changed:

Druid

Savage Roar is now considered an Enrage effect and now increases physical damage done by 30% instead of increasing attack power.

Hunter:

T.N.T. re-designed: Increases the damage done by your Explosive Shot, Explosive Trap and Immolation Trap by 2/4/6%.

Priest:

Divine Aegis: Divine Aegis effects will now stack, however the amount absorbed cannot exceed 125*level (of the target). It will also now take into account total healing including overhealing.

February 25, 2009

New pets and mounts found in the patch 3.1

MMO-Champion strikes again! So far they've already brought us undocumented changes and glyph information from the patch 3.1 PTR; now we have a whole long list of new non-combat pets and mounts. I'm pretty excited about the Enchanted Broom, myself, as far as the pets go, and...what's that? "Rideable mechanical gnome head?" Holy cats, I gotta get me one of those. Disclaimer: this is data files stuff. Some of it may change, and some may never surface at all.

New Pets

  • Spring Rabbit - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Spring Rabbit.

  • Plump Turkey - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Plump Turkey.

  • Teldrassil Sproutling - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Teldrassil Sproutling.

  • Tirisfal Batling - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Tirisfal batling.

  • Dun Morogh Cub - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Dun Morogh Cub.

  • Durotar Scorpion - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Durotar scorpion.

  • Alarming Clockbot - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Alarming Clockbot.

  • Elwynn Lamb - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Elwynn lamb.

  • Mulgore Hatchling - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Mulgore hatchling.
  • Ammen Vale Lashling - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Ammen Vale lashling.

  • Strand Crawler - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Darkspear Strand crawler.

  • Enchanted Broom - Right Click to summon and dismiss your enchanted broom.

  • Argent Squire - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Argent Crusade squire.

  • Mechanopeep - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Mechanopeep.

  • Argent Gruntling - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Argent Crusade gruntling.

  • Curious Gorloc Hatchling - Right Click to call or shoo away a Curious Gorloc Hatchling.

  • Curious Wolvar Pup - Right Click to call or shoo away a Curious Wolvar Pup.

  • Gorloc Orphan - Right Click to summon and dismiss the orphan you've agreed to look after for Children's Week.

  • Wolvar Orphan - Right Click to summon and dismiss the orphan you've agreed to look after for Children's Week.

  • Murkimus the Gladiator - Right Click to summon and dismiss Murkimus the Gladiator.

  • Sen'jin Fetish - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Sen'jin fetish.


New Mounts

  • Aquatic Riding Ray - Summons and dismisses an Aquatic Riding Ray. This is an aquatic mount.

  • Swift Stormwind Steed - Summons and dismisses a rideable Swift Stormwind Steed. This is a very fast mount.

  • Great Azuremyst Elekk - Summons and dismisses a rideable Great Azuremyst Elekk. This is a very fast mount.

  • Swift Darnassian Mistsaber - Summons and dismisses a rideable Swift Darnassian Mistaber. This is a very fast mount.

  • Swift Silvermoon Hawkstrider - Summons and dismisses a rideable Swift Silvermoon Hawkstrider. This is a very fast mount.

  • Great Mulgore Kodo - Summons and dismisses a rideable Great Mulgore Kodo. This is a very fast mount.

  • Turbostrider - Summons and dismisses a rideable Turbostrider. This is a very fast mount.

  • Swift Ironforge Ram - Summons and dismisses a rideable Swift Ironforge Ram. This is a very fast mount.

  • Swift Sen'jin Raptor - Summons and dismisses a rideable Swift Sen'jin Raptor. This is a very fast mount.

  • Forsaken Warhorse - Summons and dismisses a rideable Forsaken Warhorse. This is a very fast mount.

  • Swift Orgrimmar Wolf - Summons and dismisses a rideable Swift Orgrimmar Wolf. This is a very fast mount.

  • Mimiron's Head - Summons and dismisses a rideable mechanical gnome head. This is a very fast construction. This construction can only be summoned in Outland or Northrend.

WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Shaman Glyph

So in the cold light of day we have yet more changes than the PTR notes indicated for our beloved shamans. Both glyphs and general changes need to be discussed, and so I drag my exhausted hinder forth to dig through the vast and sprawling PTR hoopla to determine what is up for the totem dropping set. What's good, what's bad, what's head scratchingly confusing? We talked about shaman class changes in the PTR notes early this morning, so we'll start there, because it's short.

Fire Nova Totem's mana cost has been reduced. Everything else was covered in the original patch notes, so... yeah. Fire Noval Totem costs less. It's still a fire totem, so elemental shamans will have to decide between it and Totem of Wrath. But at least the decision to drop one and lose the benefits of Totem of Wrath will cost you less mana.

Luckily, we have quite a few glyphs to discuss as well. Let's talk about those.

Glyph of Thunderstorm (new) - Reduces the cooldown on Thunderstorm by 7 sec. Glyph of Feral Spirit (new) - Your spirit wolves gain an additional 30% of your attack power. Glyph of Riptide (new) - Increases the duration of Riptide by 3 sec.

Glyph of Earth Shield (new) - Increases the amount healed by your Earth Shield by 20%.

Glyph of Totem of Wrath (new) - When you cast Totem of Wrath, you gain 30% of the totem's bonus spell power for .

Glyph of Hex (new) - Increases the damage your Hex target can take before the Hex effect is removed by 20%.

Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem (new) - Your Stoneclaw Totem also places a damage absorb shield on you, equal to 4 times the strength of the shield it places on your totems. These are some interesting glyphs. The Feral Spirit change buffs an already good talent that you should be popping every time it's cooldown is up. I'm mildly excited by the Riptide change... it's not world shaking, but having a glyph for that spell makes me happy. I'd like to know if these were major or minor glyphs, I expect major.

The Thunderstorm cooldown reduction glyph will see applications for both Pvp and PvE, especially when mana is an issue. 20% more healing from ES is a purely good thing, I can't see a down side there. Glyph of Hex is nice, but really not all that necessary, and Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem could be excellent, as four time the general base absorption of around 1600 health could be pretty impressive. (I've also heard that the base on Stoneclaw's absorb is 1088, but either way, over 4k damage absorbed when Stoneclaw is down? That's not shabby.) Frankly, the one change I'm underwhelmed by is Hex. Making it take longer to break on damage isn't an issue for PvP, the fact that it's so easily escaped and doesn't even prevent player control of their character the way sheep does is. It'll be nice for PvE but with all these other glyphs would you take this one?

It would really help to know if it was major or minor, honestly.

In general, without knowing if these are major or minor glyphs (I'm assuming major for now) I'm relatively pleased with the changes all told. Nothing earth-shattering but some nice buffs to damage and healing, and the Stoneclaw Totem glyph has the potential to be really useful in situations where you're going to take a lot of burst damage.

WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Warrior glyph

We covered the changes (including the undocumented ones) to warriors on the PTR, including the new Titan's Grip 'damage tax' on fury warriors. Yeah, it sucks, I'm not happy about it, but it's probably not going to go away.

The idea of Titan's Grip being too powerful is too entrenched in too many minds, so we basically have to hope that the damage penalty only comes into play while you're actually dual wielding and is not just a flat penalty on all of your abilities while you have the talent, which would make offtanking or tanking five man instances quite painful for fury. We'll see how bad it is. Dropping fury warrior DPS by a full 10% seems pretty extreme and it hurts those warriors doing their absolute best the most (if you're putting out 4.4k DPS now, you're losing 440 DPS with this change). I guess it's a good thing I specced my tauren Arms when I did.

But enough grumbling. What about the changes to glyphs?

Glyph of Heroic Strike -- Increases the critical strike chance of Heroic Strike by 5%. (Old: You gain 10 rage when you critically strike with your Heroic Strike ability.) Glyph of Barbaric Insults -- Your Mocking Blow ability generates 100% additional threat. (Old: Your Mocking Blow ability also taunts the target.)

Glyph of Sweeping Strikes -- Reduces the rage cost of your Sweeping Strikes ability by 100%. (Old: You generate 30 rage over 12 sec when you use your Sweeping Strikes ability.)

Glyph of Overpower -- Adds a 100% chance to enable your Overpower when your attacks are parried. (Old: 50%)

Glyph of Bladestorm *new* -- Reduces the cooldown on Bladestorm by 15 sec.

Glyph of Shockwave *new* -- Reduces the cooldown on Shockwave by 3 sec.

Glyph of Vigilance *new* -- Your Vigilance ability transfers an additional 5% of your target's threat to you.

Glyph of Enraged Regeneration *new* -- Your Enraged Regeneration ability heals for an additional 10% of your health over its duration.

Glyph of Spell Reflection *new* -- Reduces the cooldown on Spell Reflection by 1 sec.

Glyph of Shield Wall *new* -- Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%.

Well, I'm not happy with that HS glyph for my tanking, but it will help my DPS (even with the damage tax on fury) so it's kind of a wash. I loved the synergy of the revenge and heroic strike glyphs, and I'm not sure why it was changed... I always take the HS glyph for my fury DPS rotation, so maybe someone thinks fury also has too much rage. At any rate, this makes me rethink my Blocking/Revenge/HS glyphs for my standard tank glyphing. Considering some of the new glyphs, that may be a good thing.

The Barbaric Insults glyph doesn't change the fact that I can think of better glyphs for tanking than one for an ability with a one minute cooldown. This is a major glyph, I'm probably still going to go with some combo of the Glyph of Blocking, Glyph of Devastate and Glyph of Revenge. Now that we also have the Glyphs of Shockwave and Vigilance to consider, this one seems like a lot of work to revamp a glyph no one is going to use. However, I'm sure someone has figured out a use for this that would shock and amaze me so we'll see.

The Sweeping Strikes glyph change seems good in that it makes the ability free, so you can pop it whenever it is up and not worry about having the rage. Just simplifies the whole thing. The Glyph of Overpower's a flat buff but I'm not sure exactly how much more of one. It seems mostly aimed at DK's in PvP, who else is parrying a lot of arms warrior attacks? Bosses don't parry when you attack from behind and warriors tanking don't generally stance dance just to throw an overpower out, although if the stance changes come in that might change too.

The new glyphs are generally all good. Bladestorm has a 1.5 minute cooldown, anything that shaves that down will be good for Arms DPS. As soon as Dual Specs come in I'm grinding up the 1k gold, and I'm very interested in both the Shockwave and Vigilance glyphs listed here, the trick is finding room for all the glyphs I'd like to have. It almost makes me want to have prot/prot as my spec on one of my warriors. Amything that makes it easier to AoE tank is fine by me, but I'd love to see this glyph also trade the stun off for more damage or threat from the ability.

Enraged Regen glyph buffs the ability, but unless it's a minor I don't think I'd have room to take it on any build I'd have. The Spell Reflection glyph is also in the same boat, although it's a stronger glyph merely because it's a stronger ability, especially for tanking magic damage mobs or in PvP against spellcasters. And the Glyph of Shield Wall effectively turns Shield Wall into a kind of Icebound Fortitude. With full Improved Disciplines and this glyph, you could Shield Wall once a minute. The damage reduction dropping to 40% helps balance that, I suppose. I don't like it but I can understand it.

Basically, you can now really customize your glyphing as a tanking warrior. If you want more AoE threat, the Shockwave glyph looks good, while the Vigilance one is a standard 'good' glyph for any tank and the Shield Wall glyph allows you to increase your amount of cooldowns in a minute (you could effectively use Shield Wall constantly while tanking rather than as a panic button) if that's how you prefer to tank. The DPS glyphs all seem aimed at arms, while the HS change makes it less desireable in my opinion.

WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Rogue changes

After a bit of testing, and reading over the unofficial patch notes, I've seen quite a few changes for Rogues coming up. Ghostcrawler had given us a few ideas on what to look forward to, and for the most part they delivered exactly what we had been expecting. Combat has had several changes designed around the idea of making it a PvE viable tree in more situations. Hunger for Blood had its mechanic altered.

However, there are more than a few unexpected changes, including significant rebalancing of our poison system and some new glyphs. After the cut, I'll cover the basics of what's changed for Rogues in 3.1: for the good, and for the worse.

Poisons:
-Poisons are now based on a PPM model.
-Envenom increases your chance to apply Instant Poison by 75% (up from 15%) for 6 seconds.
-Improved Poisons now increases your change to apply Instant Poison by 50% (up from 10%).

Blizzard has decided to nerf the double Webbed Death combo that was currently topping the Mutilate charts. A PPM system for poisons heavily favors slow weapons, and so it will remain to be seen what specs and weapon choices will shake to the top of the pile. Blizzard still wants us doing poison damage, but we'll see what turns out for us. What poisons are proc-per-minute based and what those PPMs have changed to are still under investigation.

Hunger for Blood:
-Hunger for Blood is now a single-stacking 15% damage buff, but requires there to be a bleed on the target.
-Glyph of Hunter for Blood: Increases damage by 1% per application.

It looks like Blizzard forgot to proofread the Glyph on this one, as it is suited for the old version of HfB. We'll see what it looks like later. However, I see this change as a slight nerf, since we will no longer be able to pre-cast HfB for trash, etc. The pain of losing HfB is significantly reduce, though.

Expose Armor:
-Expose Armor now reduces armor by 20%.
With the low value of Armor Penetration, I don't see this as a buff in any way. Expose Armor previously helped us to destroy low-armor targets, whereas this new change removes that ability.

Combat Buffs:
-Savage Combat now increases damage by 4% (up from 2%).
-Adrenaline Rush now has a 3 minute cooldown (down from 5).
-Lightning Reflexes is now a 3 point talent for 6% dodge and 10% melee haste (yay!).
-Killing Spree increases all damage done by 20% while in the spree.

With the possible nerf to Mutilate/poison builds and the prevalence of Shiv builds currently, we may all be speccing combat very soon.

Glyphs:
-Glyph of Killing Spree (45 seconds off cooldown)
-Glyph of Adrenaline Rush (AR lasts 5 seconds longer)
-Glyph of Shadow Dance (lasts 4 seconds longer)
-Glyph of Fan of Knives (FoK does 20% more damage)
-Glyph of Tricks of the Trade (adds 10% additional bonus damage, so 25%)
-Glyph of Mutilate (Mutilate energy cost reduced by 5 – about time!)
-Glyph of Cloak of Shadows (while Cloak is up, 40% less physical damage taken)

With the buffs to Killing Spree, Adrenaline Rush, and Fan of Knives, Combat has become a serious contender for PvE powerhouse. I am personally going to be investing in a slower main hand weapon to give this spec a shot (once I'm able to get onto the PTR). Adrenaline Rush + Fan of Knives spam will become the AoE build that other classes dream about.

The Mutilate Glyph is insane, as with the 4 piece Tier 7 bonus and Overkill, you'll be throwing 40 energy Mutilates for 6 seconds. Unfortunately it does little to help our sustained damage: Mutilate has never been a high percentage of our overall damage. The Cloak of Shadows and Tricks of the Trade glyphs will be very useful for PvP, especially on teams without a healer.

New dungeon maps on the patch 3.1 PTR

MMO Champion has posted all of the in-game maps for the new Northrend dungeons. We'd heard a while back that they'd be added in, and though there was no mention of them in the 3.1 patch notes, sure enough, they're out on the PTR.

They obviously use the same style as all of the other in-game maps, with labels of each area and concept art of the dungeon itself behind each layout. But here's something we didn't expect: each map has a skull placed where the bosses are, so with just a glance at the map you can see where the big bad guys are found. Right now, obviously, we know where they all are, but that will be interesting when maps of future instances become available.

And right now, on the world map, areas get drawn in as you discover them, but we'd guess that these maps will be opened up as soon as you enter the instance (you don't discover parts of an instance, you discover the whole thing). It'll be interesting to see, next time we explore some new instanced content, just how these maps can affect gameplay.

WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Hunter changes

The notes for Patch 3.1 and news on some undocumented changes to classes and glyphs have recently become available, and there are plenty of changes in store for us hunters. You can expect some changes to all three trees (some of which are rather minor) as well as changes to how our pets and glyphs. Lets take a look at some of the information coming down the pipe and see just what effect it will have on our game play.

Beast Mastery

The Beast Mastery tree is slated for just one minor change at the moment. There were hints from Ghostcrawler previously that the tree would receive buffs for Ulduar, but so far nothing major appears to have surfaced. For now, Improved Aspect of the Hawk is receiving a minor facelift in the form of a new spell effect being added to the talent.

Marksmanship

For Marksmanship, there are a few more changes coming our way. Piercing Shots is being redesigned to add a bleed effect to your Aimed Shot, Steady Shot and Chimera Shot abilities. Previously, this three point talent increased your armor penetration on Steady and Aimed Shot by up to 6% at Rank 3. Now, however, this talent may actually prove useful (since armor penetration definitely left something to be desired). At Rank 3, the new Piercing Shots will cause your target to bleed for up to 30% of the damage dealt over 8 seconds, giving the talent much more bang for its buck. For example, if your Steady Shot deals 750 damage, it will apply a 225 damage bleed effect on the target for 8 seconds. Same goes for Aimed and Chimera Shot. With this effect being applied to two heavily used Marksmanship rotation shots, keeping this bleed effect up constantly should be no problem, and will certainly provide a boost to overall damage.

Another change for the Marksmanship tree is a switcheroo for our old pal Ranged Weapon Specialization. This five point talent is getting dropped to a three point talent that, when maxed, will still provide the same 5% damage bonus. This will free up a couple points to make use of the buffed Piercing Shots talent, for example. Also, Wild Quiver is seeing some buffs as well. This three point talent that provides a chance to fire an additional shot when dealing damage with your Auto Shot which deals Nature damage is getting an increase from a 10% chance at Rank 3 to a 12% chance, and the damage of the Wild Quiver shot itself is getting a buff up from 50% of Auto Shot damage to 80% damage. It may not be a huge change, but for those already spending points in Wild Quiver the damage increase and increased proc chance is definitely good news.

Survival

The Survival tree has plenty of changes in store for it in patch 3.1 as well. For example, Hunting Party, formerly a five point talent, is being reduced to a three point talent that will also increase your Agility by 3% at Rank 3, giving this talent more luster in the eyes of Survival hunters. The changes to this talent will give it a lot more synergy with other talents of the tree such as Lightning Reflexes and Expose Weakness and will finally provide hunters with a reason to take the talent other than to play replacement mana battery for a night.

The changes to Lock and Load, however, are not quite as nice at first glance as some of the other changes we've seen so far. Previously, the key factor in favor of Lock and Load was its chance to give you two "free" Arcane or Explosive Shots when dealing periodic damage with Serpent Sting (which with the advent of Wrath became a cornerstone of any shot rotation). The new version of Lock and Load will have a reduced chance (6% at Rank 3, down from 10%) to proc off periodic damage, and that effect is now only triggered by the use of Immolation Trap or Black Arrow. Black Arrow is being added as a 9th Tier talent in the Survival tree that fires a Black Arrow at the target, increasing all damage done by you to the target by 6% and applies a debuff that deals 10% of your RAP plus 785 Shadow damage over 15 seconds. This ability will cost 6% of our base mana, it has a 5-35 yard range, and it will be instant cast and have a 30 second cooldown. The switch on Lock and Load to a dependence on Serpent Sting to Black Arrow will be a tough adjustment at first, but this is really an opportunity for Survival hunters to weave a new shot into their rotation that will deal a significant amount of damage. Change isn't always a bad thing, my friends.

T.N.T. is seeing some changes as well. Instead of increasing your chance to critically hit with Explosive Shot and a chance to stun on your Immolation and Explosive Traps, T.N.T. will now give a flat damage increase to your Explosive Shot, Explosive Trap and Immolation Trap – 6% at Rank 3 – as well as a 100% chance at Rank 3 to refresh the duration of those two traps on the target. Now, the increased critical strike chance for Explosive Shot from the previous version of this talent was great, but a constant, scaling damage increase will provide more reliable results. Sure, the more frequent big crits on Explosive Shot were awesome, don't get me wrong, but a scaling damage increase to the shot should at the very least even out the change.

There are a couple more minor changes coming to the Survival tree as well. Trap Mastery is being moved closer to the top of the tree, giving hunters of other specs a chance to make use of some solid trapping utility and Wyvern Sting's duration is being increased from 12 seconds to 30 seconds for PvE making it a more reliable form of CC. Unfortunately, the bad news for all you PvPers out there that are fans of Wyvern Sting is that the PvP duration of this ability is being reduced from 10 seconds to 6 seconds.

Pets

First, a couple minor changes to pet talents. Roar of Sacrifice is now a Hunter-only buff, giving us a bit more survivability. Sure, that's tough luck for our raid or party members, but Roar of Sacrifice wasn't exactly a clutch ability for raiding and your healers should easily be able to pick up the slack. The change simply means that our healers will have to spend even less time worrying about us than they did before. The Rhino's Stampede ability is also on the chopping block this time around. This ability will now only affect one target, but will add a bleed effect (which will, unfortunately, not stack with Mangle) in addition to the original knockback effect.

Skills

To go along with dual specs, hunters will be getting a new ability in patch 3.1: Call Stabled Pet. This ability will allow us to call a pet from our stables no matter where we are in the world and replace the pet we currently have summoned. This ability will be instant, but cannot be used in combat and will have a 30 minute cooldown. The bad news for our lowbie brethren is that this new ability will require Level 80 to train and use. The benefits to this change are obvious – how many times have we all lamented having to make a trip to the stables to swap pets? Now we'll be able to swap pets without seeking out a stable master every 30 minutes if we choose which is especially handy if you're using the new dual spec feature to swap out of Beast Mastery.

In addition to this new ability, we're going to see some changes to Kill Shot. Kill Shot will no longer have a minimum range, meaning it will be effective within melee range of your target. This change will be particularly great for PvP hunters trying to finish off an opponent you're having trouble kiting, and PvE hunters will also appreciate the increased flexibility. Also, the cooldown on Disengage is getting a minor increase, from 25 seconds to 30 seconds.

Glyphs

First, lets start with some new glyphs that will be available to us come patch day.

Glyph of Chimera Shot will reduce the cooldown of Chimera Shot by 1 second. This glyph will be nothing earth-shattering, so you can probably overlook it especially if you have Glyph of Serpent Sting to increase your sting's duration (meaning you won't need Chimera Shot so soon to refresh it). Glyph of Explosive Shot increases the critical strike chance of Explosive Shot by 4%. With the changes to T.N.T., this glyph will be a must-have for Survival hunters. Glyph of Kill Shot will reduce the cooldown of Kill Shot by 6 seconds. This new glyph will probably not be all that helpful to PvP hunters, but PvE hunters whittling away at a boss will find it helpful to get in an extra Kill Shot or two before its time to collect loot.

Glyph of Scatter Shot will increase the range of Scatter Shot by 3 yards, giving PvP hunters a bit more flexibility. Glyph of Explosive Trap will give your Explosive Trap damage the ability to critically hit; however, this trap is so seldom used in practical game play that the usefulness of this glyph is questionable. Depending on what level it will be available at, perhaps hunters still working their way through the leveling process will find some use for it. The final new glyph, Glyph of Raptor Strike, will be good news for PvP hunters. For 5 seconds after using your Raptor Strike ability, you'll take 20% less damage, which will help make the get-away process that much easier when you're stuck toe-to-toe with melee classes.

In addition to these new glyphs, there are going to be some changes to the glyphs we already know and love. Glyph of Aimed Shot is getting a facelift – instead of reducing the mana cost of Aimed Shot, this glyph will now reduce the cooldown of Aimed Shot by 2 seconds. A change from 10 seconds to 8 seconds isn't all that significant and frankly, I would've preferred they keep the mana cost reduction on this glyph. The increased movement speed provided by Glyph of Aspect of the Monkey can now only occur every 20 seconds, meaning a minor nerf for you PvP hunters out there. Glyph of Wyvern Sting is also getting a minor tweak; this glyph now simply decreases the cooldown of Wyvern Sting by 6 seconds (instead of 10 seconds with a damage nerf). Glyph of Snake Trap now increases your snakes' survivability, rather than giving you two additional snakes, making this a bit more viable but only slightly so. And finally, Glyph of Aspect of the Hawk was renamed to Glyph of the Hawk.

Wrap Up

There's a ton of information to digest here, but by and large it seems like Hunters have been spared a severe beating with the nerf bat this time around and most of the news coming down the pipe has been relatively good. At the moment, that's all the information on hunters currently available from the PTRs on patch 3.1. More information will, of course, be posted as it becomes available and tips from readers like you are always welcome!

WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Paladin glyphs

Delicious new glyphs and some rework of old ones in this massive content Patch 3.1. In the midst of all the excitement, let's try to look at the Paladin glyphs and what they mean for the class.

Glyph of Exorcism - Increases damage done by Exorcism by 20%. (Old: Your Exorcism also interrupts spellcasting for 2 sec.)
You really didn't think they'd let us keep the interrupt now that it can be cast on any target, did you? Of course not. However, this glyph is a solid choice for the third glyph slot for every Retribution Paladin, who will have Exorcism firmly in their rotations. While we pine for the loss of a possible spell interrupt, the DPS increase is pretty solid.

Glyph of Divinity - Your Lay on Hands grants twice as much mana as normal and also grants you as much mana as it grants your target. (Old: Your Lay on Hands also grants you as much mana as it grants your target.)
The mana returns are great, but there are better glyph choices out there, specially the new ones introduced in Patch 3.1, particularly the next one...

Glyph of Lay on Hands -- Reduces the cooldown of your Lay on Hands spell by 5 min.(Old: Increases the mana restored by your Lay on Hands spell by 20%)
Now this is an awesome glyph. Without talents, this allows the use of one of the best emergency buttons ever every 15 minutes. With Improved Lay on Hands, that gets cut down to 11 minutes. It still won't be usable in Arenas, of course, but the change makes it excellent for raiding. We'll probably need to use it a lot in Ulduar, anyway. Also, expect Blizzard to change the 4-piece set bonus of the Tier 3 Redemption set, designed during a time when Lay on Hands was on a one-hour cooldown.

More glyphs of pure win after the jump...


Glyph of Beacon of Light *new* - Increases the duration of Beacon of Light by 30 sec.
Okay, so not all the new glyphs are pure win. This isn't so bad, though, it's a mana conservation glyph that effectively shaves off about a third of the cost of the Beacon and also eases micromanagement.

Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous *new* - Your Hammer of the Righteous hits 1 additional target.
This is a solid DPS increase with no downside. It's excellent threat generation for multiple targets -- not that Paladin tanks really needed help in that regard -- but if you see the other glyphs available you probably wouldn't give this one a second look.

Glyph of Divine Storm *new* - Your Divine Storm now heals for an additional 15% of the damage it causes.
Raiding Retribution Paladins, who currently struggle to find the optimal third glyph, now have another option in addition to the redesigned Glyph of Exorcism. While not contributing to raw DPS, this is decent raid utility which might help during progression where raids generally take a beating. It's also an option for Arena PvP for more team healing.

Glyph of Shield of Righteousness *new* - Reduces the mana cost of Shield of Righteousness by 1 to 6%.
What does 'by 1 to 6%' mean, exactly? Aside from being vague, a mana cost reduction to an already cheap spell (it costs 6% of base mana) that's used mostly by a spec that should have very few mana problems (thanks to the reworked Guarded by the Light) is just rubbish. Alright, so much for pure win.

Glyph of Divine Plea *new* - While Divine Plea is active, you take 3% reduced damage from all sources.
Try to wrap your head around this one for a moment... the change to Guarded by the Light allows Divine Plea to be up virtually all the time. With this glyph, that translates to a near permanent 3% damage reduction. That makes this glyph arguably the best tanking glyph ever. See? There are some pure win glyphs.

Glyph of Holy Shock *new* - Reduces the cooldown of Holy Shock by 1 sec.
If you're a Holy Paladin these days and you're not using Holy Shock, you're doing it wrong. With this glyph, Holy Shock becomes even more of a staple spell. Everywhere around the world, we just heard the sound of all Shockadins soil their pants. Thank you very much.

Glyph of Hand of Salvation *new* - When you cast Hand of Salvation on yourself, it also reduces damage taken by 20%.
The PvE implications are pretty simple... if you accumulate threat, you can buy yourself some time while those mobs beat on you. On the other hand, the new feature means Paladins get a 20% damage reduction every two minutes on a Hand spell. It doesn't activate Forbearance, doesn't prevent the use of Avenging Wrath or anything like that. It turns Hand of Salvation into a straight up survivability spell on a relatively short cooldown. PvP glyph, anyone? I only wish it could be used on tanks.

There you have it. The new batch of glyphs in Patch 3.1. If our glyph choices were limited to a few, they've certainly expanded them. It should be a really fun time for Paladins when the patch finally makes it live.

WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Death Knight glyphs

When they said the 3.1 PTR patch notes were incomplete, they weren't kidding. The undocumented changes that have been discovered make the patch notes look like a sketch. But I'm not complaining; it's nice to have actual numbers to go with phrases like "damage increased" or "ranks reduced." So here I'm going to run through the undocumented changes we know about, as well as the new glyphs, and give some reactions.

Everything in the official patch notes was covered by Daniel Whitcomb, so I won't be replicating his work here; go ahead and read that first.

Blood
I like the streamlining of Pestilence and Blood Boil (Pestilence no longer does damage, but Blood Boil now does more and does some when no diseases are present). The new Glyph of Pestilence makes Pestilence refresh your disease duration on your primary target as well, which is really convenient (no more tab-Pest necessary). I will miss the increased range, though.

I'm not really sure what to make of the changes to the damage from Blood Strike and Heart Strike. They both scale less from weapon damage, but get more of a flat boost, and the amount they gain from diseases is a percentage instead of a flat amount. I'll need to play with it on the PTR to see how it actually works out, unless some math wizards have done this already. (Commenters? Anyone?) At a guess, I'd say it makes diseaseless rotations less attractive.

As far as Blood Gorged now giving armor penetration instead of expertise, if it was any other DK spec, I'd cry foul, but Blood is the one spec for which ArPen isn't entirely wasted (since Blood does relatively more physical damage). I'm guessing this change is to make us hit the expertise soft cap less quickly, which is a good thing (since they keep throwing expertise gear at us).

Might of Mograine now ups the crit bonus of your various abilities by 10/20/30%, down from 15/30/45%. A straight nerf to an incredible talent.

Sudden Doom is the change that caught my eye when the devs pre-announced it a little while ago. Instead of making your next Death Coil free and auto-crit, it now simply fires off a free DC. It is now also three ranks for 5/10/15% chance, instead of five for 4/8/12/16/20%.

This is a mixed bag, but it's mostly good. Blood has big GCD problems, with our main strike being only one rune; not having to use a GCD on SD procs is great. We lose out on the gauranteed critness, and we lose 5% proc chance, but we gain two talent points. Overall I'd say it may be a slight DPS nerf, but a playability buff.

The Aura nerf angers me vastly, but that's not important. What is important is we now know exactly the effect of the new Blood Aura (renamed Improved Blood Presence): you keep the 4% healing from Blood Presence in all presences, and all healing done to you while in Blood Presence is increased by 10%.

The first part will be kind of nice for tanks, I guess, but really marginal overall. The second part has me scratching my head. It would be great for tanking if it worked in Frost Presence, and great for PvP if it worked in Unholy Presence. As is, I guess it helps the healers patch up the DPS a little, but Blood is already quite good at self-healing. A big thumbs down to Improved Blood Presence from me.

Bloody Strikes has been reworked; it now increases the damage of BS and HS by 15/30/45% and increases the damage of BB by 20/40/60%. I guess they've swapped out the increased damage from diseases to the spells themselves, and the switch from Pestilence to BB is of course a natural consequence of Pestilence no longer doing damage.

Finally, there's a new talent: Improved Death Strike, which increases the damage of your DS by 15/30%. I have no idea what this is for.

Frost
Howling Blast (which is trading places with Hungering Cold to move to the bottom of the tree) is getting its damage bonus for Frost-Fevered targets cut from double damage to 50% additional damage (although the official patch notes say 20%). It's still a great spell, but this nerf will hurt a lot of Frost specs.

Unbreakable Armor is getting changed to reduce physical damage from all attacks by an amount depending on your armor, and increase your strength by 25% for 20 seconds. Whether this is a buff or a nerf will depend on the scaling factor from armor, which I don't know.

Blood of the North (which was reduced to three ranks) will now affect Frost Strike as well as Blood Strike. This should help offset the decreased damage from HB.

Runic Power Mastery has moved up to tier 1 and is two points for the same benefit. This may make it attractive for Blood specs to pick up. Unholy specs should still skip it; we need the points for Blood and Unholy talents, and honestly, if you're Unholy and you can't manage to spend your RP, you need some more practice.

Unholy
My own DK is Unholy DPS specced, and I love it. So I'm glad to see they aren't completely eviscerating us in this patch.

Plague Strike is getting a big buff in damage, although the HoT removal is getting stripped. Still, it may no longer be a button we are quite so unhappy to push (although Glyph of Scourge Strike will still keep it relatively rare in Unholy rotations).

Raise Dead's cooldown was lowered from 5 to 3 minutes, but the little guy only lasts one minute. This doesn't affect Unholy players, of course, since we've got Master of Ghouls; it just serves to make it even less worthwhile to summon a ghoul when you're not Unholy. I don't understand why they would do that.

Scourge Strike was buffed; it now does 55% of weapon damage + 158.63, plus 9% per disease. Like Daniel, I have no idea why they buffed a strike that already hits like a truck, but I'm not complaining.

The new Unholy Aura (now Improved Unholy Presence) is completely worthless outside of PvP, where you will benefit from the 5/10% faster rune cooldown, and leveling, where you will enjoy the the 8/15% increased movement speed in Blood Presence. Like Improved Blood Presence, a big thumbs-down from me.

Anti-Magic Zone no longer costs a rune, which will make it even handier in a pinch for tanks. Not much to say about that; DK tanks live and die (well, hopefully live) by our defensive cooldowns, and making them more accessible is nice.

Daniel already covered Ghoul Frenzy (replaces Shadow of Death, Tier 6, 1 point talent - Grants your pet 25% haste for 15 sec and heals it for 30% of its health over the duration. 1 Unholy Rune. 45 Yard range. Channeled. 30 sec cooldown), but I just need to say that I will never use it as it currently is. No way am I taking 15 seconds channeling time to up my ghoul's DPS a tiny bit and heal it; I'll just use an instant cast to summon a new ghoul and go back to slamming the boss. Then again, I don't really use Shadow of Death as it is, so it's no great loss.

Glyphs
I covered some glyphs already, but I'll run through them here quickly.

Glyph of Strangulate - Reduces the cooldown of your Strangulate by 60 sec. (Old: Inceases the range of your Strangulate by 20 yards.) The old glyph was overpowered in PvP. The new glyph is overpowered in PvP.

Glyph of Icebound Fortitude - Your Icebound Fortitude now always grants at least 30% damage reduction, regardless of your defense skill. (Old: Your Icebound Fortitude costs no runic power) Another PvP-related glyph; tanks don't care.

Glyph of Unbreakable Armor - Increases the amount of damage absorbed by Unbreakable Armor by 1%. (Old: Unbreakable Armor grants an additional 15% armor) 1%? One freaking percent? PASS.

Glyph of Plague Strike - Your Plague Strike does 60% additional damage. (Old: 20% additional damage if a disease was on the target) This one, on the other hand...60% on top of PS's already buffed damage will be pretty strong. I may try to make room for this one.

Glyph of Death Strike - Increases your Death Strike's damage by 2% for every 5 runic power you currently have. The runic power is not consumed by this effect. (Old: 2% regardless of runic power) I still don't understand the place of DS, really.

Glyph of Hungering Cold (new) - Reduces the cost of Hungering Cold by 10 runic power. Eh. RP is cheap. This doesn't hurt; I jut hope it's a minor and not a major glyph.

Glyph of Unholy Blight (new) - Increases the duration of Unholy Blight by 10 sec. This one, on the other hand, is delicious. Anything that makes me have to press buttons less often is aces to me.

Glyph of Death Coil (new) - Reduces the cost of Death Coil by 8 runic power. 8? That's a weird number. Why not 10, like the Hungering Cold glyph? Blood is the class that uses DC the most, but this may not help them that much, because they have so much GCD trouble

Glyph of Pestilence (new) - Your Pestilence ability now refreshes disease durations on your primary target back to their maximum duration. Yes! Yes yes yes. This is amazing. Of course, it means I will now find myself using Pestilence even on one target, if the Glyph of Scourge Strike fails to refresh diseases, which feels a bit weird. But I still love it.

Glyph of Howling Blast (new) - Your Howling Blast ability now infects your targets with Frost Fever. Nice to see Frost get some auto-disease-refreshing ability. And there you have it! My thoughts on what we know about the DK changes so far. Hold on to your blunt implements, folks; 3.1 is going to be a roller coaster of a development process. I just have that feeling.

WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Warlock glyphs

So many goodies in Patch 3.1, I don't know where to start. Okay, I do know where to start... we looked at some class changes. Now, though, it's time to examine the glyphs of the new patch. We've got some gems here...

Glyph of Incinerate - Increases the damage done by Incinerate by 5% (Old: Glyph of Banish Increases the duration of your Banish by 5 sec.)
A no-nonsense increase in DPS to replace a glyph that nobody ever took? Why not? Considering Incinerate spam is part of Destruction's deal, this is a pleasant glyph to have.

Glyph of Imp - Increases the damage done by your Imp's Firebolt spell by 20%. (Old: 10%)
This significantly packs more punch into an Imp's firepower. A solid choice of glyph for Destruction Warlocks who already invest points in Improved Imp, Demonic Power, and Empowered Imp. It's like having a machine gun. A very talkative, smart-lipped machine gun.

Glyph of Haunt *new* - The bonus damage granted by your Haunt spell is increased by an additional 3%.
Although Haunt was nerfed to apply exclusively to shadow damage, this glyph is hands down the best glyph choice for Affliction Warlocks.


Glyph of Metamorphosis *new* -- Increases the duration of your Metamorphosis by 6 sec.
Speaking of glyphs of choice, this one is a no-brainer. This extends the duration of the spell by a solid 20%, which when coupled with the new Nemesis talent means that Metamorphosis would be up for 36 seconds every 126 seconds. That's a 28.6% uptime to a 20% DPS increase. I don't even need to get into the PvP implications of this. It's just too scary.

Glyph of Chaos Bolt *new* - Reduces the cooldown on Chaos Bolt by 2 sec.
Another straight up DPS increase. If you're speccing deep enough into Destruction to pick up Chaos Bolt, there's no reason not to have it in your rotation and no reason not to have this glyph. It may be vanilla, but it's great tasting vanilla.

Glyph of Demonic Circle *new* - Reduces the cooldown on Demonic Circle by 0.4 sec.
There just has to be one trash glyph, doesn't there? I'm sure there's a typo somewhere but I can't test it right now because my PTR client keeps crashing on me. 0.4 seconds is a joke cooldown for a spell with a 30 second cooldown. Heck, even 4 seconds off the cooldown won't make this glyph -- likely a major one -- worth putting in. Maybe a longer range or a CC-removal effect would've been more desirable. I'm almost certain this will change in the future.

Glyph of Shadowflame *new* -- Your Shadowflame also applies a 70% movement speed slow on its victims.
An 8 second 70% snare just screams PvP glyph to me. If there wasn't much reason to use Shadowflame in PvP then, there's certainly a reason to now. This should help improve Warlock survivability in PvP. Baby steps.

Glyph of Soul Link *new* - Increases the percentage of damage shared via your Soul Link by an additional 5%.
Didn't I just say baby steps? Here's another glyph mostly useful for PvP and almost brings Soul Link to its old levels. Still, with the number of wonderful glyphs out there, I'm not sure this 5% buff is enough to merit it a slot. Not a bad choice for total survivability, though.

Glyph of Life Tap *new* - When you use Life Tap, you gain 20% of your spirit as spell power for 20 sec.
Man, here's another glyph that's pure win. If you didn't have Life Tap in your rotation, even with the 4-piece Plagueheart set, this glyph should be all that's needed to convince you. More than ever, Spirit has become a beautiful stat for Warlocks. Because we don't have to concern ourselves with the nerfs to Spirit-based mana regen, it's more valuable to us because of Life Tap's spirit coefficient. With this glyph and Fel Armor up, that's essentially 50% of our Spirit converted directly into Spell Power. Do I even need to explain how awesome that is? No. So get this glyph if it makes it live and put that Life Tap squarely into your rotation.

Nice, isn't it? A lot of these glyphs are extremely solid choices for glyph slots and translate directly to DPS or survivability, which address a lot of current Warlock concerns. This patch is shaping up rather nicely for Warlocks, so keep posted for more news as they come.

WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Mage glyphs

Good news, guys. Polymorph: Rabbit is finally here. You can stop writing angry letters to Blizzard; they've finally heard your pleas. On the PTRs for patch 3.1, you can now change your opponents into a rabbit, providing you a much-needed alternative to only being able to change them into a sheep, penguin, pig, turtle, black cat, serpent, or a smoldering pile of ash. I think I speak for everyone when I say: Thank God. We can only hope it'll cost a stupid amount of gold to procure.

Aside from that (and I hope you can see the sarcasm dripping from every word up there), there just isn't that much to get excited about here for Mages. We were promised several things, and you'd have to be truly skilled at seeing silver linings to view any of the documented or undocumented changes we know about at this point as Blizzard even approaching delivery on any of those promises. I'm not thrilled.

I'll go in depth on these changes in Saturday's Arcane Brilliance, and maybe we'll know more by then, but for now, let me list the changes with my brief impressions of them.

The actual changes are posted first, with my initial reactions to them in italics directly after each.

Patch Notes for Mages

  • Arcane Blast stacking effect is no longer considered a Magic effect and will not be dispelled. This is a needed change. I have zero problem with it, but it should have happened a long time ago.

Frost

  • Improved Water Elemental: Renamed Enduring Winter. Instead of the Water Elemental increasing mana regeneration for the Mage's party, casting Frostbolt now has a 33/66/100% chance to provide the Replenishment buff to up to 10 people in the Mage's party or raid. As you'll see in the undocumented changes below, this isn't exactly accurate. I'll hold my tongue until you get to that listing.

Undocumented Mage Changes

Arcane

Skills

  • Mage Armor has been increased to allow 50% of your mana regneration to continue while casting. (Previously 30%) We sort of knew this was coming. As you'll see, the talents in the Arcane and Fire trees that grant mana regen while casting are similarly buffed. This is to counterbalance the across-the-board nerf to spirit-based mana regeneration also coming in this patch. Essentially, it will ensure that these talents grant about the same amount of regen post-patch that they do now. It's not really a buff, and not really a nerf, either.

  • *New Spell* Polymorph Rabbit - Transforms the enemy into a harmless rabbit, forcing it to scamper around for up to 50 sec. While wandering, the rabbit cannot attack or cast spells but will regenerate very quickly. Any damage will transform the target back into its normal form. Only one target can be polymorphed at a time. Only works on Beasts, Humanoids and Critters. Super.


Talents
  • Arcane Meditation (Tier 4) Allows 17/33/50% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting. (Previously 10/20/30%) Again, this change isn't the buff that it may seem to be. It only serves to counter the nerf to spirit-based regen. As a by-product, it also makes this talent even more of a must-take talent for PvE than it already was.


Fire

Talents



  • Burnout (Tier 10) now only affects Fire Spells. (Previously affected all spells) This doesn't change much, as for the most part only deep Fire and Frostfire Mages have access to this talent anyway.
  • Pyromaniac (Tier 7) now allows 17/33/50% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting. (Previously 10/20/30%) Now, I'm not on the PTR to test this out, but I'm assuming the other part of this talent, the extra 3% crit chance, is still intact. If not, this is unacceptable. If so, this is another change made solely to counterbalance the spirit nerf.

Frost

Talents

  • Improved Water Elemental (Tier 9) has been renamed Enduring Winter. It now increases the duration of your Summon Water Elemental spell by 5 sec and your Frostbolt spell has a 33/66/100% chance to grant the Replenishment effect to up to 10 party or raid members mana regeneration equal to 0.25% of their maximum mana per second for 15 sec. Okay. This is as close as we get to the fulfilment of any of the promised Mage changes. Frost Mages get replenishment. The replenishment mechanic is tied to the main nuke, Frostbolt, so it will be up constantly without any change in the rotation Frost Mages were already using. I guess this is a stab at giving Frost Mages more raid utility, but I'm just not seeing it. Chances are there's already another class (Shadow Priest, Survival Hunter, Retribution Paladin) offering a replenishment buff in your raid, and these buffs don't stack. Oh well, at least now Frost Mages have a bit more to offer a raid. We'll see how this works out.
Undocumented Glyph Changes





  • Glyph of Ice Lance - Your Ice Lance now causes 4 times damage against frozen targets higher level than you instead of triple damage. (Old: Increases the range of your Ice Lance by 5 yards) I suppose this is Blizzard's way of giving you a reason to use Ice Lance in raids? It's a positive change to the glyph, as the old range-increasing functionality wasn't very useful in PvE. I just hope this isn't all Blizzard had in mind when they promised "PvE Shatter combos."
  • Glyph of Ice Armor - Your Ice Armor and Frost Armor spells grant an additional 50% armor and resistance. (Old: 20%) A good PvP change that makes a glyph that was previously of dubious worth more valuable.

  • Glyph of Deep Freeze (new) - Increases the range of Deep Freeze by 10 yards. A welcome change, though I would have preferred a glyph that PUT BACK THE DAMAGE THE COMPONENT making the spell worthwhile in PvE. The extra range is nice for PvP, though.

  • Glyph of Living Bomb (new) - The periodic damage from your Living Bomb can now be critical strikes. Awesome. Really, this makes Living Bomb even more useful as part of a PvE rotation. I'm a fan of this change. It's a DPS increase. I'm always a fan of DPS increases.

  • Glyph of Arcane Barrage (new) - Reduces the mana cost of Arcane Barrage by 20%. I'm assuming this is a way to counterbalance the recent damage nerf this spell suffered, and make it a worthwhile part of a PvE rotation again. I just think it's stupid that I have to waste a glyph slot to make the spell worth the mana cost again.

  • Glyph of Mirror Image (new) - Your Mirror Images gain the Winter's Chill talent, granting their Frostbolt spell a 100% chance to apply the Winter's Chill effect, which increases the chance spells will critically hit the target by 1% for 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times. I need some time to run the numbers on this before I decide on committing glyph slot on it, but it sounds like a decent DPS increase to me. It'd certainly be nice to have a better reason to blow the cooldown on this spell every time it's up during boss fights, and a potential 5% crit chance bonus that applies to everybody (which is what it sounds like this does) would do that and then some. More on this in Saturday's Arcane Brilliance, after I get a chance to look into it more closely.

  • Glyph of Ice Barrier (new) - Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your Ice Barrier by 30%. Another good PvP glyph. This one will certainly be worthy of a slot for just about any PvP Frost Mage.

That's it for now, but come on back on Saturday and we'll talk some more, you and I.