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WoW Warriors: Talent specializations and abilities

2011-06-19T07:06:00.000-07:00

In some ways, we're fortunate that Cataclysm has simplified these for us. There are fewer must-have talents; several passive talents were rolled into the talent specialization bonuses for picking a spec; and there's room for us to choose what we want and don't want. First, we'll look at each spec's talent specializations and then the talents and abilities therein. We covered mastery bonuses for all three specs in this column, so we won't discuss them again here aside from mentioning what they are.

Arms talent specializations are Mortal Strilke for the active attack and for passives, Two-Handed Weapon Specialization and Anger Management. The mastery is Strikes of Opportunity. The fury talent specializations are Bloodthirst (an active attack) and Dual Wield Specialization and Precision for passive bonuses, with Unshackled Fury as the mastery. There's no real choice involved in any of these save for the choice that you make between each tree at level 10, so simply be aware of them and their interaction with your chosen spec.

An arms warrior will be using a priority-based system based around the Mortal Strike ability, applying bleeds with Rend and the Deep Wounds talent and using Overpower and Colossus Smash as they proc. Slam and Heroic Strike are rage dumps, with Execute becoming a powerful attack when your target is below 20 percent health. We'll take a look at arms talents of consequence now.

Tier 1 arms talents are War Academy, Field Dressing, and Blitz. Field Dressing is a talent for leveling and tanking; most arms warriors will probably use it for a while but abandon it in a pure DPS spec. It's also strong for PvP. Blitz is also a good PvP talent for an arms warrior as well as a solid tanking talent, very useful for flag defense and the like. War Academy is simply a DPS boost that all arms warriors will take.
Tier 2 and 3 arms talents include Deep Wounds, Taste for Blood, Sweeping Strikes, and Impale. These are all straightforward DPS increases either through additional damage, allowing procs, or increasing how many targets you hit. Tactical Mastery allows for rage conservation when switching stances (useful for PvP or when trying to use abilities from Defensive or Berserker stance in general); Second Wind provides a little extra survivability when stunned; Drums of War allows you to save rage when interrupting or debuffing; and Improved Hamstring gives you a chance to immobilize someone you've snared. You don't have real CC, but you can provide excellent snaring with this talent.
For the fourth and fifth tier of the arms tree, we have Improved Slam, Deadly Calm, Blood Frenzy, Lambs to the Slaughter, Juggernaut, and Sudden Death. Unless something changes drastically before we reach level 85, Improved Slam is probably the least desirable of these talents. Deadly Calm is an excellent cooldown for either situations where you're low on rage but need to put out damage now, or for when you reach execute territory and want to keep all of your rage for the next execute. Blood Frenzy is still a solid debuff; it helps with rage generation, which is always a plus for arms. Lambs to the Slaughter is a DPS increase for using arms' main attack; Juggernaut is just plain awesome and increases your damage after you use Charge; and Sudden Death makes Colossus Smash a viable part of your rotation, which is awesome due to Colossus Smash's ability to bypass armor.
Finally, we have Wrecking Crew, Bladestorm, and Throwdown. Take all three. Frankly, I'm not even going to bother going over why you should; just do it. If you don't want to take these talents as a DPS warrior, you want to be fury.
Speaking of fury, the fury "rotation" is more fluid and dependent on enrages. You'll use Bloodthirst on cooldown, with Heroic Strike taking up a big part of the rotation up now due to its being off the global cooldown (meaning that you can hit HS and BT at the same time without stepping on, say, a Raging Blow proc) and Raging Blow when it procs. You're intended to use Bloodsurge-procced Slams on cooldown, as well. But with Slam damage being lackluster for the foreseeable future and Colossus Smash, Raging Blow, and HS for the single-target rotation (and Cleave/Whirlwind for adds), Slam may end up sliding down the priority queue. I've done parses at level 80 that indicate it might still be worth using, but we'll have to wait and see. (My level 85 beta parses ended up within 100 DPS between my ignoring Slam runs and my using it on every proc runs, which has me scratching my head.)

Tier 1 fury talents are Blood Craze, Battle Trance, and Cruelty. Blood Craze was heavily nerfed in recent weeks and is now a leveling curiosity at best until/unless you combine it with Field Dressing; even then, it's lackluster. The Battle Trance/Cruelty combo will get you to Tier 2 and are both excellent talents.
Tier 2 is Executioner, Booming Voice, Rude Interruption, and Piercing Howl. These are all fairly solid talents, with Executioner being good solid DPS in that 20 percent execute phase. Booming Voice is more and better rage generation; Rude Interruption gives you a nice DPS boost for doing what you should do anyway and interrupting spell casts; and Piercing Howl is good for PvP and PvE situations. It's a fairly well-loaded tier.
Tier 3 is Flurry, Death Wish, and Enrage. Let me just say it now: You'll max all of these. Just take them and move on.
Tier 4 is Die by the Sword, Raging Blow, Rampage, and Heroic Fury. Die by the Sword is a nice concept but does not do enough for the points, in my opinion. I get that it is intended to save a fury warrior who steals some aggro from horrible death, but even so, I have a hard time imagining putting points there with Raging Blow, Rampage and Heroic Fury in the same level.
Tier 5 is Furious Attacks, Meat Cleaver, and Intensify Rage. Furious Attacks is pretty useless now for PvP since it can only reduce healing by 10 percent and it can only be applied by an autoattack; it's not reliable. Meat Cleaver and Intensify Rage are excellent talents.
Tier 6 and 7 are Bloodsurge, Skirmisher, Titan's Grip, and Single-Minded Fury. TG and SMF are what you choose if you want to dual wield two-handed or one-handed weapons, respectively. Bloodsurge will be good at 85 if Slam damage scales reasonably and not if not. Skirmisher is excellent for high-mobility fights and PvP.
In addition to all this, there are several new abilities to consider for DPS warriors. These are Inner Rage, Colossus Smash, and Heroic Leap. Inner Rage will serve you as a DPS cooldown in cases of high rage (and arms warriors, you can't use Inner Rage during Deadly Calm), while Colossus Smash will be used on cooldown by both specs (arms will get Colossus Smash reset procs from Sudden Death, getting more use out of it). Heroic Leap is both more freedom to move around (basically a targetable Charge, it could serve to evacuate an area quickly) and an added attack. One could imagine Intervening to an ally, then using Heroic Leap to get back into the fray and add some extra damage at the same time.

What stats do I want as a DPS warrior?

2011-06-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

What stats do I want as a DPS warrior?

Each DPS spec uses the same stats but has different targets for each. One of the nice changes Cataclysm has in store for you as a warrior is that the game automatically does the math for rating conversion on your character pane as you level, so you won't need to worry about exactly how much hit rating you'll need; it will tell you.

Hit Rating Arms has an easier time hitting its target than fury, but for either spec, hit is possibly the best DPS stat until you hit the cap. When looking at your character panel, you'll see exactly what your chance to miss an attack is with your current hit. You can adjust it via gemming, enchanting and gearing. In general, you should at least aim for the minimum amount of hit necessary to not miss special attacks, which is 8 percent. As we level to 85, boss-level mobs will go from level 83 to level 88, but the percentage of hit we'll need to hit them will remain fixed at 8 percent, unmodified by talents or racial abilities. The rating needed to get that much hit will increase with every level. As you can see in the screenshot above, hitting the 8 percent hit you'd need to be completely hit-capped on an arms warrior will be doable by the first tier of Cataclysm raiding. Fury hit capping will be much, much more difficult.

Strength With the removal of ArP, strength is your go-to red gem of choice when socketing your gear; it is the main source of raw damage output for a warrior. While you definitely want to make sure your attacks hit, you also want to make sure they do some damage.
Expertise You need exactly 26 expertise to push a raid boss' chance to dodge your attacks off of the table. The parry cap is not worth considering, since it's fairly high and you aren't supposed to be attacking your target from in front, where it does all those nasty cleaves and special horrible attacks that we let the tanks soak up. Frankly, hitting the 26 expertise cap is not going to be much of a problem by the time you're in the first raid tier of gear. You may even have to start reforging it off at that point. I suggest hit, if you're a fury warrior. Arms will most likely move it to crit.

Haste With the changes to the rage mechanic (as discussed here and in numerous other places), haste, expertise and hit rating are now the only stats that increase a DPS warrior's rage generation. Expertise and hit work by reducing dodges and misses, since an attack that doesn't connect doesn't generate rage. Haste works by increasing the speed of your white swings, thus getting more swings in to generate more rage with. Since haste doesn't work on arms warrior's DoT damage, it's still a fairly lackluster stat for arms, but in tests I've run as fury, it can provide a fairly significant DPS boost. I'd rate it below the "must cap" stats and strength, but it is surprisingly close to critical strike rating in some situations for fury.
Critical strike rating Even in raid gear, your critical strike chance is going to plummet in Cataclysm. With stats that just have to be capped and agility almost useless for us (while it generates both attack power and crit for agility classes), you're going to most likely end up with much lower crit at 85 than at 80 for a good long while. Gear has to scale somehow. I'd prioritize crit below hit and around the same as haste or expertise, depending on your spec.
Mastery We've recently discussed mastery in detail. It's the "do whatever you do better" stat added just for Cataclysm. While it's a very good stat, it will probably benefit arms faster than fury, due to arms' having less punishing hit caps to reach.

What are the WoW warrior DPS specs? And their benefits\drawbacks?

2011-06-19T07:02:00.000-07:00

What are the warrior DPS specs?

This one's fairly easy. When you hit level 10 or selected your talent points after the Shattering, did you choose protection as your primary spec? Yes? Then you're not a DPS warrior. You're a tank. Thank you for your interest in DPS warriors; please do not show up for an instance with a sword and board and 31 points in protection and try to DPS in defensive stance. You'll give the tank fits, generate little to no DPS, and confuse everyone.

If you chose arms or fury, however, congratulations. You're a DPS warrior. That's right, two out of the three warrior specs are all about hurting things. Whether you like hitting things with a big two-hander, two smaller one-handers, or two big two-handers, it all comes back to hitting things.

Arms is, in a nutshell, the finesse spec. You're still interested in picking up a colossal sword, axe, mace or polearm and ruining someone's day, but you do so with an eye towards efficiency and precise, debilitating strikes. Arms warriors deal their enemies small wounds to cause them to bleed and crippling wounds that inhibit magical healing. They take advantage of their opponent's tendency to duck out of the way to deal strikes that overpower their defenses entirely. Arms warriors are specialists, tacticians on the battleground. They can even weave their weapon into a storm of strikes at higher levels.

At its heart, fury is about grabbing a couple of weapons and smashing everything hostile with them until everything is dead ... and then probably hitting them a few more times. In the words of Théoden, "Fell deeds awake, fire and slaughter! Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now, ride now! Ride to ruin, and the world's ending!" Or as that notable fury warrior the Incredible Hulk might put it, "Hulk smash." Leveling fury warriors will use two weapons that are designed to be used in one hand, but the talent Titan's Grip will allow a fury warrior to dual wield two-handers if desired. (If you'd rather not, Single-Minded Fury allows you to continue using one-handers while boosting damage to compensate for losing the higher damage of two-handers.)

What are their benefits?

If you prefer offense to defense, these are the specs for you. Either DPS spec can generally produce much higher damage output than a tanking warrior. If you want to dual wield, fury is required (it's one of the specialization bonuses for fury), while arms gets significant bonuses to two-handed weapon use. Most PvP (player vs. player) warriors are arms warriors, due to the talent spec's combination of debuffs, offensive power and mobility. Fury warriors are generally more popular for PvE (player vs. environment) content such as dungeons and raids, but each spec sees use in each context.

If you want to be one of the ones doing the direct killing, these are the specs for you.

What are their drawbacks?

Warriors are intended to be a hybrid class, one that can fulfill more than one role in the game. The roles are defined as tanking, DPS and healing. Since warriors can specialize their talents to either tank or DPS, they are designed to be inferior DPSers than classes that can only DPS. (Crowd control abilities, such as are possessed by most pure DPS classes, are not considered a role in this case.) Warriors do not have any significant CC (not counting the Glyph of Intimidating Shout) and so cannot fulfill that role in an instance group or raid. In essence, if a warrior is there to deal damage, that's all he's going to be able to do, save for perhaps emergency tanking for a few seconds.

WoW Warriors: How to level in Cataclysm

2011-06-19T06:59:00.000-07:00

One of the things I get asked to do is explain not how talents and abilities work, but rather how best to level a warrior. I'm always taken aback by these kinds of questions, because I feel that leveling (whether it be a warrior or another class) in WoW has never been easier than it is in Cataclysm. But, since the question comes up a lot between emails and Twitter, I feel like I should spend some time discussing it. I expect to be doing a lot of discussion of wow patch 4.2 in the weeks ahead, so now is probably as good timing as it gets to cover the leveling game.

Let's discuss leveling. For purposes of the discussion I went and rolled a tauren warrior on Sisters of Elune. Yes, I have a problem. Still, I managed to level out of the tauren starting area without any heirlooms in one night, so it should serve as a useful tool for discussion.

Starting Out

For starters, having recently leveled a druid, a rogue, a shaman and a hunter past level 20 (the druid is level 77, the shaman max level, the rogue level 32 and the hunter level 19) I can tell you that leveling a warrior is no longer harder than leveling any other class. Between level 1 and 10, you lack the power of picking a talent specialization, but you still have all the tools you need as the 1 to 10 content is designed around your character and his slowly growing toolkit. Really, what's most important to keep in mind for a leveling warrior is how to focus on one target when questing. With Victory Rush as powerful as it is for soloing and questing, you simply need to maximize your one-at-a-time killing rate so as to pop up another Victory Rush in order to heal you while fighting more than one mob.

Your best bet as a warrior of those levels is to quest. Do not grind unless there's a quest that rewards grinding. Pick up as many quests as you can, especially ones that can be completed in close proximity to each other. Once you get access to Victory Rush at level five, you now have an ability that counteracts the greatest of warrior leveling weaknesses from the first four years of the game -- namely that warriors couldn't survive more than one mob adding on them. VR means that you, as a low level warrior, now have even odds of surviving when more than one quest mob adds. It makes it possible to grind quest mobs with little to no downtime. I can't praise VR enough as a leveling tool. The only ability that has more of an effect is Charge at level 3 because it gives you an opening move that guarantees you'll have some rage to hit Strike with. Strike is actually a fairly lackluster ability and you'll happily replace it with whatever your talent specialization attack is at level 10.

Once you reach level 13 or so, instances open up. Running an instance or two a day while questing in zones between them is probably the fastest way to level up, especially if you have heirlooms. Even if you don't (this article is written assuming you don't need them, because frankly, you do not) you can easily clear a zone in a few hours. As it stands right now, you can successfully level in any talent specialization, can level via tanking, can level through PVP, or mix in all these types of activity. I personally prefer to run one instance and do a few battlegrounds during a play session, then focus on clearing out a zone's quests. This usually nets me between five and seven levels for a few hours of play, depending on what level I am and how abundant the zones are in quests. PVP is probably slower than either questing or instancing, but it's still quite possible to gain four or five levels in three or four hours of PVP.

Try everything

As a warrior, you can tank in instances. Dual Talent Specialization is available at level 30 for a mere 10 gold, and if you have any interest in leveling more quickly and growing to understand the tank role, I recommend getting a second spec and speccing protection. At least until level 50, however, it's not necessary to spec prot to tank in the leveling instances. Any warrior can equip a shield and use Sunder Armor (gained at level 18) and their main attacks to hold threat in most situations. I myself have tanked up to Sunken Temple (an early 50's instance) as arms with a shield and one-hander. There's no reason not to try out protection as early as possible to gain access to talents and abilities that help with both threat and survival, but keep it in mind. Tanking is probably the fastest way to level a warrior right now, as you can queue pretty much instantly from the moment instances become available all the way to level 85.

After tanking, clearing a zone's quests is probably the fastest way to level, and is quite possible in any spec for a warrior. Gone are the days where tank specs couldn't kill anything, or fury simply didn't have the oomph under max level. Arms remains one of my favorite leveling specs simply because leveling as arms helps you grow into an understanding of one of the games more complicated melee DPS priority systems. Arms also works well as a tanking spec at lower levels and is, of course, a solid PVP spec pretty much from level 20 on. Fury really comes into its own at level 69 when you gain Titan's Grip or Single-Minded Fury, but arms and protection are always good from 10 to 85, and can easily be used to level through any zone, run instances, and PVP in battlegrounds. I found that PVP is very strong for buying gear at level 60 and 70 that will surpass what you could get in same level instances. The 60 PVP set and epic weapon will last you almost through to the next expansion's content, so if you're not using heirlooms please keep PVP purchases in mind. Frankly, even though I admit I'm hardly the best PVP warrior around (not even close) I found the rewards definitely worth running a few battlegrounds a day, and I even had fun doing it.

To sum it all up, I spent a little over week working on this toon, running instances, questing, and doing PVP between them. I got in maybe two to three hours a day, more on weekends, and without heirlooms I'm well into level 64. I'm wearing a full set of level 60 PVP epics simply because I could (I gathered the honor fairly easily). It's on par with Outland gear, although I expect I'll be replacing all of it soon with Northrend instance gear. It doesn't take long at all to level with the improved questing in the 1-60 zones, tanking is easy in any spec up to level 50, and I keep a prot offspec handy for when I feel like tanking now that I'm into more complicated content. Leveling a warrior has absolutely never been easier, and if you're one of the people asking me about it, I recommend giving it a try.

the 9th PvP season would be ending as soon as June 28th rather than the 21st.

2011-06-18T06:43:00.000-07:00

The WoW community site was recently updated to let players know that the 9th PvP season would be ending as soon as June 28th rather than the 21st. What does this mean for us? Unofficial confirmation that patch 4.2 has been moved back at least a week. The new probable release date is June 28.

Earlier this week, a new balance patch hit the PTR and made some decently sized changes to abilities and their associated numbers. No new assets were added, but a lot of numbers were moved around. After Ghostcrawler's excellent balance post and call for feedback, we guessed that this patch on the PTR could have the potential to push the patch back a week. Well, it looks like it did.

Update your calendars, folks. You've got an extra week to push tier 11 content and have a patch-free Midsummer Fire Festival, which launches on the 21st.

You can now take Mr. Robot (new mobile app) anywhere you want.

2011-06-18T06:37:00.000-07:00

With the release of their new mobile app, you can now take Mr. Robot anywhere you want. The app is available for $1.99 on the iTunes store and the Android Marketplace.

Mr. Robot is a great tool for newer players to get a better idea and understanding of how to rearrange their augments like gems, enchants and reforges. Even for the veteran players who disagreed or wanted additional control over the stat weights, the values and weights are able to be customized.

Read on for a quick overview and my thoughts on the app.

Just to clarify, I have an iPhone 4 and an Asus Eee Pad Transformer. That means I have both versions of it: One for my phone and one for my tablet. There are a few demonstration shots you can find on their app pages. When you get it, you'll be taken to a screen where you can either load up your character from the armory or create a class of your choice and load up gear. Once your characters have been loaded, they can be saved and referenced later on.

For the players who want to fine tune the stat weightings, you can certainly customize them and adjust how you want the weights to be set and even impose a maximum cap on a particular stat.

Want to see what else is available for a slot? You can tap the list function and it shows what's available for that slot. It'll even tell you where it drops from including the boss you need to take down or whether or not it is a crafted item. If you like, you can simulate having an item equipped in order to see what effect it has on the rest of your character.
Cheap CHI hair straightener

Tapping into an item brings you full information on it including how you have it reforged, gemmed and enchanted at present. Hitting the optimized button shows you the best augments you can get on it. And yes, Ask Mr. Robot does take your set pieces under consideration.

WoW Patch 4.2 Public Test Realm Guide

2011-06-16T16:08:00.000-07:00

Patch 4.2 Public Test Realm Guide - Valor & Justice Points

The number of Valor Points awarded for killing a boss in the Firelands is 70 120 in 10-player mode, and 90 140 in 25-player mode.

The number of Valor Points awarded for killing Occu'thar in Baradin Hold is 35 120 in 10-player mode, and 45 140 in 25-player mode.

The previous, lower values caused a lot of hand wringing on the official forums. As people rightly complained, they did not allow raiders to reach the weekly cap simply by running the new tier 12 content. Players would have to choose between five-man heroics and stale tier 11 content to cap their VP, something many considered a time-consuming tedium.

The new values allow ten-man raiders to (almost) reach the new 960 980 point VP cap with a full clear of all new tier 12 content; 25-man raiders can reach the cap by beating any seven of the eight.

Here are the details of WoW Patch 4.2 Public Test Realm Guide

Patch 4.2 is now available on the Public Test Realms! With a new raid, a legendary questline, the most diverse daily quest hub to date, major story developments, user interface enhancements, and much more, patch 4.2 is certain to have something for everyone. Check out the Public Test Realm Discussion forum for information on helping us test out the new content. We’d love to have you!

Before you get testing, here are some major features coming in patch 4.2 you need to know about, followed by the latest patch notes.

Through the Fire and Flames

Feast your eyes on the adventures that await when World of Warcraft patch 4.2 takes you through the fire and flames and into the Firelands.

The Firelands

World of Warcraft patch 4.2 will offer hardy adventurers an opportunity to turn the tide in the Firelands, a huge outdoor raid of the highest difficulty, with 10-person and 25-person normal and Heroic modes. It will be a scorching opportunity to delve into this Elemental Plane, where six unique bosses stand between you and the reinvigorated Ragnaros.

A Legendary Engagement

Patch 4.2 introduces an epic quest that will challenge those daring enough to complete the legendary staff Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest. The great staff duplicates destructive magics, and also bestows upon its wielder the ability to transform into a member of the Blue Dragonflight. Those who complete the staff won’t be the only ones to receive a reward, though. As this task requires the dedication of an entire guild, upon completion of the staff all guild members will receive a unique non-combat pet to call their own.

The Regrowth and Molten Front

In patch 4.2, stalwart adventurers will have the opportunity to test their mettle at two new daily quest areas located in the fertile hillsides of Mount Hyjal and the burning depths of the Firelands. Known as the Regrowth and Molten Front, these areas will offer an unprecedented amount of daily solo content for level-85 players to enjoy -- including over 60 new quests, four "unlockable" iLevel 365 gear vendors, and a world that evolves right before your eyes.

Elemental Bonds

After the druids and their allies thwarted the invasion of Hyjal by the Twilight's Hammer and Ragnaros, an air of peace settled on the sacred mountain. As new growth bloomed across the region, members of the Earthen Ring and Cenarion Circle, along with the noble Dragon Aspects, convened at the ancient World Tree of Nordrassil. Among the gathered heroes were the legendary archdruid Malfurion Stormrage, the former Horde warchief and accomplished shaman Thrall, and his strong-willed companion, Aggra. Together, this illustrious assemblage was to unite its wondrous powers and restore the World Tree for the good of Azeroth.

Yet this auspicious event ended in tragedy. The details are still unclear, but word has spread that an incredibly powerful Twilight's Hammer agent, shrouded to hide his identity, interrupted the ceremony and struck down Thrall with dark magics... casting his spirit into the four domains of the Elemental Plane. If these terrible rumors hold true, the Earthen Ring -- indeed, all of Azeroth -- has potentially lost one of its greatest champions.

…Is this the end of the Son of Durotan?

BlizzCast 16 on Patch 4.2

We're excited to present the first-ever video BlizzCast, now in beautiful full-motion 2D! (Don't forget to wear your 2D glasses.) We've also jam-packed this episode with juicy information on World of Warcraft patch 4.2. Rob “The Voice” Simpson sits down with Game Director Tom Chilton to find out what the patch is all about, Lead Quest Designer Dave Kosak lays out info on the new Firelands quest hub, and Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton spits and flows on Ragnaros and the upcoming raid content.

Before jumping onto the PTR, you might also fancy yourself a preview of the new tier armor and nifty Dungeon Journal. If you’ll be helping us to test the latest World of Warcraft: Cataclysm content, stay tuned for the implementation of all of these 4.2 features in the weeks ahead. We’ll be frequently updating the patch notes below to let you know what’s available on the PTR, and you can keep your eye on the Public Test Realm Discussion forum, as we will surely make requests for feedback and focused testing there. Feel free to let your hands and feet drift out of the proverbial car while it’s moving. Just keep in mind this isn’t the complete list of 4.2 features or patch notes.

WoW Patch 4.2 trailer, and it's a doozy.

2011-06-16T16:04:00.000-07:00

Hot off of the official World of Warcraft Youtube channel, we have the official patch 4.2 trailer, and it's a doozy.

And we get to see exactly what Rag has in store for not only Mount Hyjal and the World Tree but the entire world. Death, destruction, all that kind of thing. It's an elemental donnybrook.

I gotta say, that's one heck of a well executed trailer.
Hearkens back to the Gods of Zul'Aman and the Black Temple trailer for sheer awesome, and those were two of my absolutely favorite patch trailers.
I'm excited. Let's go save the world, everybody.

The MM talent tree: the hunter marksmanship tree

2011-06-16T15:56:00.000-07:00

For reference, here is the MM talent tree as it stands now. (You can play with it in detail on Wowhead). I've tossed on here some of the talents that we typically take for a raiding build (though there is variability there), but in discussing potential talent changes, we have to take PVP into account just as much :)

MM specializations

MM hunters get the following special bonuses just for choosing the MM tree:

Bonus Ability: Aimed Shot
Specialization: Artisan Quiver
Mastery: Wild Quiver

Right off the bat, we're in a nicer place than the BM hunters. Aimed Shot is a strong part of the MM rotation -- hardcasting Aimed Shot is our ideal focus dump when we're confident that we won't have to move, and for the low level hunter, it's a nice opener when questing.

Our specialization and mastery are both useful and help secure the feel of the tree as the spec that focuses on actually shooting things and dealing ranged physical damage. Personally, I'm fine with all of these as they stand.

Talent changes

Once we get to the talent trees themselves we can pretty quickly find things that could be changed around. Like the BM tree, we have some extra talent points to spend in our tree, but unlike BM these choices are actually choices -- and we have actual DPS options for all of them. Unfortunately, some of the choices get really confusing.

The more I think about talents, the more I appreciate how difficult balancing the top tier of each tree is. When you consider it from the perspective of another tree looking to spread their excess points, there's almost always an obvious right choice. I almost wonder if the right idea wouldn't be to make sure that no first-tier talents boosted DPS at all. Then you have to spend those points on a non-DPS option, at which point you suddenly have a choice.

Once you get down to the second tier you can then have significantly more awesome abilities, because the cost to get there is much higher -- you would have to have spent 5 points on fun, quality of life, or survivability talents before you can take them.

I think that's an idea worth considering, but for the time being I'm going to set it aside and look at what I'd tweak with the talent trees as they are.

GftT and Sic' Em: Right at the top, we have to wonder a little bit why these are in the MM tree. Don't get me wrong, MM hunters love our pets too and we're happy to grab these talents to buff our DPS, but they feel like they belong to the BM hunters.

Efficiency: Personally, I think Efficiency a pretty dull talent -- and it's something all specs end up having to take (BM has to take it just to get their pet talents on the second tier of the MM tree). A multi-level talent offering a passive bonus that is considered required for all specs sounds to me like the kind of thing that we want to get rid of. I say replace Efficiency with something else, or possibly change the talent into something more interesting -- like lowering the cost of one shot significantly, or making Steady Shot regen more focus -- or heck, how about giving us our range extension talent back? That should have belonged to MM anyway.

Then we come to the fourth tier of the MM talent tree, which is the place where I have the most issues with talents. This tier is just plain odd.

Resistance is Futile: While the Resistance is Futile talent can certainly give us some nice benefit, and it's great in PvP, it just doesn't feel like a MM talent. The MM rotation is sufficiently challenging without trying to toss Kill Command into the mix. I'm fine with the idea that KC is available to MM and SV to use in PvP and if we ever have another fight where we're out of LoS of the boss, but I really don't think it should be something we regularly use in boss fights -- but with Resistance is Futile, it is. In any fight where the boss is apt to move a decent amount, either on it's own or through regular tank repositioning (so most bosses at some point), this becomes a valid DPS talent choice, and really screws with the MM rotation in the process. Give it to BM, I say.

Termination: Termination looks pretty attractive on the surface, but in practice it can be difficult to actually make use of the additional focus because of how incredibly rigid the MM rotation is. Because it's only available at the very end of the fight, we're already using Kill Shots and free Kill Shots from our glyph (making us already more focus positive at the end of the fight) in our rotation, and we still want to hit our Chimera Shot every cooldown, and we have to maintain our Improved Steady Shot buff with pairs of Steady Shots. It just doesn't leave much space for an extra shot to use the extra focus. This talent would be far better if it just didn't only apply during the last 25% of a boss fight. Either move it to something that's available earlier, or change it from increasing focus regen to just flat increasing damage during that period (or increasing damage of certain shots -- comboing with Kill Shot could make sense).

Patch 4.2 PTR patch notes updated for June 10

2011-06-15T05:56:00.000-07:00

Blizzard has once again updated the patch notes for patch 4.2, which will introduce the Firelands raid and the Molten Front and the Regrowth questing areas. The most recent versions of the patch have been marked "release," and PVP Season 9 is ending soon, which means we should see patch 4.2 drop in the next couple of weeks. Get your shoes on, kids -- we're almost at Grandpa Ragnaros' house.

The most interesting change in these notes is the effective nerfing of raiding for valor points. The maximum number of valor points one can achieve weekly has been lowered to 980, down from 1,250. The number of valor points you could earn through heroic dungeons and the new Zandalari heroics were 490 and 980 respectively, and raiders could earn an extra 270 points on top of that. Now, it is possible to get the maximum amount of valor points from just doing Zandalari heroics.

We do not yet know why this change was made. Raiders will understandably be perplexed, as one of the raid game's main draws was faster valor point gear. In addition, the prices for valor point gear have not changed, so certain pieces of gear that used to require two weeks will now require more collecting. Hit the jump for all the new changes.

General

New Daily Quests: The Regrowth and Molten Front
◦A large assortment of all-new daily quests and rewards are now available in Hyjal, where players can help the Guardians of Hyjal push back the allies of Ragnaros and establish a forward operating base in the Firelands! In order to partake in the Regrowth and Molten Front daily quests, players must have at least completed up to and including the quest Aessina's Miracle. Once this quest has been completed, players should speak with Matoclaw in the Sanctuary of Malorne to take part in the Regrowth efforts.

New Quest Chain: Elemental Bonds
◦A New quest line is now available to level-85 Horde and Alliance characters, bringing brave adventurers to Thrall's aid. The Call of the World-Shaman, the quest which will point players toward Thrall and The Nordrassil Summit, can be obtained in Stormwind or Orgrimmar. New Raid: The Firelands Located within the Elemental Plane, the Firelands is an all-new 10- and 25-player raid featuring normal and Heroic difficulties! Battle-hardened veterans of the Horde and Alliance now have an opportunity to strike at Ragnaros the Firelord and his loyal servants by venturing into their domain via Sulfuron Spire in Mount Hyjal.

New Legendary Item: Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest
◦Steadfast raiders have an opportunity to embark on a series of quests to create an all-new legendary caster staff. In order to begin the process of assembling the staff, players must first kill a Molten Lord in the Firelands. Once a Molten Lord is killed, players can accept the quest A Legendary Engagement from Ziradormi or Coridormi in Orgrimmar or Stormwind.

New User Interface Feature: Dungeon Journal
◦A host of dungeon information is now built into the user interface via the all-new Dungeon Journal. This feature can be accessed with the "M" key while in a dungeon, or via a new button in the navigation tray from anywhere in the world. Boss background story, encounter details, abilities, and loot can be viewed with the Dungeon Journal for all bosses which have been integrated into the new system. Additional dungeons are planned to be incorporated into the Dungeon Journal in future updates.

Death Knights

Unholy Might now increases Strength by 20%, up from 5%.

Druids

Starfire damage has been increased by approximately 23%.
Wrath damage has been increased by approximately 23%.
The 4-piece Balance druid tier 11 PvE set bonus, Astral Alignment, now provides a total of 15% critical strike chance with 3 charges, decreasing by 5% per charge, instead of 99% decreasing by 33% per charge. This change was made because the set bonus proved so valuable it was not possible to upgrade out of the set into tier 12. To compensate, changes have been made to Starfire and Wrath (listed at the top of the druid class section).
The 2-piece Restoration druid tier 11 PvE set bonus has been redesigned to work with the new Restoration druid mastery. Druids with this bonus now receive the bonus to Spirit while the Harmony mastery bonus to periodic healing is active.

Paladins

Illuminated Healing (Mastery) has been adjusted slightly so that if a paladin refreshes an existing copy of his or her own Illuminated Healing on a target, the new absorption amount will be added into the old absorption amount and the duration will be reset. The total absorption created can never exceed 1/3 of the casting paladin's health.
Inquiry of Faith now increases Inquisition duration by 66/133/200%, up from 50/100/150%.

Shaman

The 4-piece Elemental shaman PvP set bonus (Gladiator's Thunderfist set) has been redesigned. It now causes Lightning Shield to generate an extra charge, rather than consuming one, when it is triggered by receiving damage, up to a maximum of 3 (9 with the Rolling Thunder talent).
Dungeons and Raids
Valor Points
◦The maximum number of Valor Points which can be earned in a week from any and all applicable dungeons and raids is now 980, down from 1250.
◦The maximum number of Valor Points awarded for completing Rise of the Zandalari dungeons remains at 980.
◦The maximum number of Valor Points awarded for completing Heroic dungeons remains at 490.
◦The number of Valor Points awarded for killing a boss in the Firelands is 70 in 10-player mode, and 90 in 25-player mode.
◦The number of Valor Points awarded for killing Occu'thar in Baradin Hold is 35 in 10-player mode, and 45 in 25-player mode.
◦The number of Valor Points awarded for killing a boss on Heroic difficulty in The Bastion of Twilight, Blackwing Descent, and Throne of the Four winds is 35 in 10-player mode, and 45 in 25-player mode.
Baradin Hold
◦Occu'thar has broken free from his cage and presents an all-new boss challenge to players in 10- and 25-player arrangements who control Tol Barad.

Blizzard has updated the community site tier 12 armor preview with the final 2 armor sets -- warrior and druid.

2011-06-15T05:55:00.001-07:00

Blizzard has updated the community site tier 12 armor preview with the final 2 armor sets -- warrior and druid. Patch 4.2 is coming soon, as players prepare for the invasion into the Firelands to confront Ragnaros for the (potentially) last time. Each armor set for this raid tier has its looks originating from something in the Firelands, going for the instance motif over the class motif.

Warriors will dress themselves in the Molten Giant Battleplate, made in the image of the new molten giant model. You may remember molten giants and molten destroyers from the Molten Core. They also wander fields of lava in the Firelands, ready to lumber over to unsuspecting players.

Druids will be donning the Obsidian Arborweave sets, based on what appears to be the tree that Malfurion and the Avengers of Hyjal are growing in the Firelands as the foward base against Ragnaros. Maybe, as a restoration druid, you were upset that Tree of Life was not a permanent form anymore. Well, now you get to dress up like a tree. Compromise. Hit the jump for a pic of the druid set.

By the way, Obsidian Arborweave is the most "Blizzard" name for anything I have ever seen. I hope that guy got a raise.

WoW Gear: Can you still tank?

2011-06-15T05:48:00.000-07:00

World of Warcraft: WoW The great tank gear drought of the 60s

The problem is gear. Upon exiting the starting zone, you are thrust out into the world with a minimum of tank gear. Both your trinkets do have tank stats or procs, as does your chest, but it's still a mishmash, and you may find yourself wanting solid tank gear. If you're an alt, as you probably are, you may be lucky enough to have a main that can throw you a few of the new tanking heirlooms, including the cape, shoulders, helm, and chest. That said, the level 58 to 70 field is generally a wasteland of decent tanking upgrades.

Whether from smithing or quest gear, Outland really isn't that big on gear specifically for tanks, especially for questing. Your best bet is to spend a little time outside of dungeons questing in order to grab what high-stamina quest rewards you can, such as the Underworld Helm. You can also grab the Fearless Girdle and the Circle's Stalwart Helmet in Zangarmarsh, which you can gem with Wrath-era gems to give yourself a nice head start on your HP pool or tank stats.

Can you still tank? The answer, essentially, is yes. It isn't always pretty, but low level dungeons are a lot simpler than high level heroics. Your gear doesn't have to be so severely tanked focused, either. That said, there are at least a few things you should do to make sure you're the best tank you can be.

WoW PTR Patch 4.1

2011-03-05T18:43:00.000-08:00

World of Warcraft Patch 4.1 is coming to the Public Test Realm, and it's bringing all sorts of new content to the game. Most notably, Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman are both being reintroduced as 5-player Cataclysm Heroics! Our friends at Wowhead are keeping track of all the changes in an informative blog post, and here are the highlights:

The return of Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman (that's worth mentioning again)

New Molten Front zone and epic trinkets - Firelands raid coming

New class skills and spell changes

New mounts and companion pets

New guild reputation tabards

New achievements and statistics

Wowhead has brought back their PTR site so you can keep track of the latest 4.1 additions, including spell changes and new and updated icons. Keep checking back for more information as it is released.

You can also discuss the return of Zul'Gurub an Zul'Aman in this thread in our WoW general forum, or make some new topics to discuss other aspects of the patch. What are your thoughts?

Patch 4.1 Public Test Realms Coming Soon

That's right, folks. Development on the first major content patch for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is well underway! We're currently making preparations to bring some of the initial content and updates we've been working on for this patch to the Public Test Realms. So you ask, "what will we find in the first 4.1 test client?" (You did ask that, right?) Well, let me tell you!
The Gurubashi Tribe Persists
Originally a 20-player dungeon released in patch 1.7, Zul'Gurub will once again open its gates, featuring updated lore, all-new encounters, achievements, and improved loot! Zul'Gurub is now a level-85 five-player Heroic difficulty dungeon. To provide a new tier above the current Cataclysm dungeons, players can expect to find epic-quality item level 353 loot. The minimum average item level to enter this Heroic dungeon is 346.
The Return of Zul'Aman
Ever a player favorite, the level-70 ten-player dungeon of Zul'Aman is being reintroduced as a level-85 Heroic five-player dungeon. Zul'Aman will join Zul'Gurub in a new Dungeon Finder tier of Heroic dungeons, providing epic-quality item level 353 loot. The minimum average item level to enter this Heroic dungeon is also 346. While Zul'Aman will be more of a throwback to the original dungeon featuring many of the same encounters, players can expect to find some updated gameplay mechanics, as well as new environment textures and lighting.
With the Zuls returning, you may be wondering about the unique mounts that were once contained therein. We're pleased to announce that new versions of the rare raptor, tiger, and bear mounts will be available, while the old versions of these mounts will remain unique to those who already have them. We'll reveal more about how these updated mounts can be obtained in the future.

Class Design

While we do intend to make fewer balance changes in patch 4.1, you can still expect to find a fair number of updates. Below are just a few we'd like to share with you right now. Keep in mind these changes don't encompass the entirety of the 4.1 changes, nor do the initial Public Test Realm patch notes.

To start, we want to do a better job of balancing the AoE power of the different damage-dealing specs. You can expect to see some changes to this end made throughout the testing process.

Inner Rage is now available at level 56. It was intended to solve an excess rage problem that largely isn’t affecting warriors anymore. We’ve added a replacement ability for warriors at level 83: Rallying Cry.

Colossus Smash now ignores 70% of an opponent's armor, down from 100%. We are compensating Fury and Arms warriors by increasing the damage of other attacks.

Word of Glory: We want Retribution and Protection paladins to have reasonable healing on themselves or others, but we know paladins sometimes feel like they can’t use their Holy Power on anything but their heals in some situations. We’d rather these two specs spend most of their Holy Power on damage-dealing abilities, with occasional healing.

More To Come

We're still hard at work on additional features, balance updates, and bug fixes for patch 4.1. We look forward to sharing more information with you in the days and weeks ahead as we release new content on the Public Test Realms. Until then, have a look at the patch notes we've prepared thus far. As always, these notes are not final and will continue to change as we go through the iterative development and testing processes.

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 4.1

Last updated February 28, 7:30 PM PST.

Table of Contents

General

Classes

Dungeons & Raids

Guilds

Items

Professions

Quests & Creatures

Races

User Interface

Important: These patch notes are not final. Additional updates will be made, and all existing changes are subject to revision during the course of the testing process. More information regarding patch 4.1 can be found here. Visit our Public Test Realm forum for more information about the testing process.

General

Flying mounts can now be used in Ghostlands.

Resilience scaling has been modified for linear returns, as opposed to increasing returns. Under the new formula, going from 30 resilience to 40 resilience gives players the same increase to survivability as going from 0 to 10. Resilience now scales in the same way armor and magic resistances do. A player with 32.5% damage reduction from resilience in 4.0.6 should see their damage reduction unchanged in 4.1. Those with less than 32.5% will gain slightly. Those with more will lose some damage reduction, increasingly so as their resilience climbs.

Classes: General

All non-damaging interrupts off the global cooldown will now always hit the target. This includes Pummel, Shield Bash, Kick, Mind Freeze, Rebuke, Skull Bash, Counterspell, Wind Shear, Solar Beam, Silencing Shot, and related player pet abilities.

Death Knights

Dark Simulacrum now works on numerous additional spells in dungeon encounters.

Raise Ally has been redesigned to be a battle resurrection, analogous to Rebirth. It is instant cast, but costs 50 Runic Power to use, and has a 10-minute cooldown. It shares the same global battle resurrection cap with Rebirth and Soulstone.

Talent Specializations

Blood
- Blood Shield now only works while in Blood Presence.
- Death Strike self-healing no longer generates threat.

Frost

Blood of the North (passive) now permanently converts both Blood Runes into Death Runes. There is no longer any proc interaction with Blood Strike required to activate Death Runes.

Frost Strike now deals 130% of weapon damage, up from 110%.

Howling Blast damage has been increased by 20%. To compensate, the area-of-effect splash now does 50% of the single-target damage, down from 60%. The net result of this change leaves the area-of-effect damage roughly the same as 4.0.6 numbers.

Glyphs
- Glyph of Raise Ally is now Glyph of Death Gate, and makes Death Gate cast 60% faster.

Druids

Cyclone duration has been reduced to 5 seconds, down from 6.

Efflorescence has a new spell effect.

Lifebloom's bloom effect has been reduced by 20%.

Stampeding Roar's duration has been increased to 8 seconds, up from 6. The movement speed effect has been increased to 60%, up from 40%.

Swipe (Bear) cooldown has been reduced to 3 seconds, down from 6.

Talent Specializations

Balance
- Starsurge damage has been reduced by 20%.
- Solar Beam is now more responsive when enemies move into or out of it.

Restoration

Gift of Nature (passive) also reduces Tranquility’s cooldown by 2.5/5 minutes.

Hunters

Deterrence no longer requires a melee weapon to be equipped.

Explosive Trap now has a new spell effect.

Master's Call now has a new spell effect.

Tame Beast now tames pets to match the hunter's level, rather than 3 levels below.

Mages

Talent Specializations
- Fire
  - Ignite is no longer triggered from periodic critical effects.

Paladins

Word of Glory now has a 20-second cooldown.

Talent Specializations
- Holy
  - Aura Mastery: This ability no longer increases the benefit granted by Crusader Aura.
  - Walk in the Light (passive) removes the cooldown of Word of Glory.
- Protection
  - Divine Guardian cooldown is now 3 minutes, up from 2.
- Retribution
  - Divine Storm now generates 1 point of Holy Power if it hits (i.e. successfully lands on) 4 or more targets.
  - Sacred Shield's internal cooldown has been increased to 60 seconds, up from 30.

Priests

Divine Aegis duration has been increased to 15 seconds, up from 12.

Dispel Magic can only be used on the casting priest as a baseline effect.

Holy Word: Sanctuary has a new spell effect.

Inner Will and Inner Fire now last until canceled.

Power Word: Shield duration has been reduced to 15 seconds, down from 30.

Talent Specializations
- Discipline
  - Absolution (new passive) enables priests to use Dispel Magic on up to 2 harmful effects on friendly targets.
  - Power Word: Barrier's cooldown has been increased to 3 minutes, up from 2, and its effect has been reduced to 25%, down from 30%.
  - It is now possible to remove Weakened Soul effects that were a result of another priest's Power Word: Shield through Strength of Soul.
- Holy
  - Absolution (new passive) enables priests to use Dispel Magic on up to 2 harmful effects on friendly targets.

Rogues

Recuperate base effect now heals 3% per tick, up from 2%.

Stealth base cooldown has been reduced to 4 seconds, down from 10, and the movement penalty from being in Stealth has been removed.

Tricks of the Trade now has a 100-yard range, up from 20.

Talent Specializations

Combat
- Improved Recuperate now adds 0.5%/1% to the health restoration effect of Recuperate, down from 1%/2%.

Subtlety

Nightstalker now reduces the cooldown of Stealth by 2/4 seconds, and instead of negating the movement penalty from Stealth, it adds a 5/10% movement speed bonus (stacking with other effects) while Stealthed.

Shaman

Fire Nova has been redesigned and decoupled from shaman Fire totems. Instead, it now pulses the Fire Nova effect from each target that is afflicted by the shaman's own Flame Shock debuff. It now damages all enemies except the target hit by Flame Shock. The ability's cooldown has been reduced to 4 seconds, down from 10.

Magma Totem now lasts for 60 seconds, up from 21.

Stoneclaw Totem's area-of-effect threat pulse no longer affects critters.

Talent Specializations
- Elemental Combat
  - Earthquake is no longer a channeled spell. It now has a 2-second cast time, lasts for 10 seconds, and has a 10-second cooldown. Its damage has been reduced by 40% from its channeled version.
- Enhancement
  - Improved Fire Nova has been redesigned and replaced by a talent called Seasoned Winds. When an enemy spell cast is successfully prevented with Wind Shear or Grounding Totem, the shaman gains magical resistance (in an amount equal to what a protection totem/aura would grant, stacking with such buffs) to the spell school(s) of the interrupted spell (except for Holy spells), lasting 10 seconds.

Warlocks

Talent Specializations
- Affliction
  - Haunt damage has been increased by 30%.
  - Shadow Mastery (passive) has been increased to 30%, up from 25%.
- Demonology
  - Mana Feed now restores more mana (four times as much) when the warlock is using a Felguard or Felhunter.

Pets
- Doomguard's damage has been increased by 50%. The Doomguard is intended to be the best guardian for single-target damage, and the Infernal the best when there are multiple targets.
- Shadow Bite (Felhunter) damage and effect has doubled.

Warriors

Charge and Intercept no longer have diminishing returns on their stun effects.

Colossus Smash now ignores 70% of an opponent's armor, down from 100%.

Heroic Throw is now available from trainers at level 20.

Inner Rage is now available at level 56.

Intercept now has a 1.5-second stun, down from 3 seconds.

Overpower damage has been increased to 140% weapon damage, up from 125%.

Pummel is now usable in all stances.

Rallying Cry (new ability) is available from trainers at level 83. It temporarily grants the warrior and all party or raid members within 30 yards 20% of maximum health for 10 seconds. After the effect expires, the health is lost. It has no cost, no stance requirements, and is not on the global cooldown. It has a 3-minute cooldown, but also shares a cooldown with Last Stand.

Shield Bash has been removed from the game.

Spell Reflection cooldown has been increased to 25 seconds, up from 10.

Whirlwind now has its cooldown reduced by 6 seconds when it deals damage to 4 or more targets. The Whirlwind effect caused by Bladestorm remains unchanged.

Talent Specializations
- Arms
  - Improved Hamstring now reduces the global cooldown on Hamstring by 0.5/1 seconds in addition to its current effects.
  - Improved Slam increases Slam damage by 20/40%, up from 10/20%.
  - Juggernaut no longer adds 2 seconds to the Charge stun, but instead lowers the cooldown of Charge by 2 seconds (to 13 seconds total without the glyph).
  - Lambs to the Slaughter now causes Mortal Strike to refresh Rend in addition to its current effects.
  - Mortal Strike damage has been increased to 175% weapon damage, up from 150%.
- Fury
  - Flurry haste bonus has been doubled to 16/32/50%.
  - Raging Blow damage has been increased back to 120% weapon damage, up from 100%.
- Protection
  - Shield Mastery no longer affects the cooldown of Spell Reflection, however, it now allows Shield Block to reduce magic damage as well.
  - Gag Order now only affects Heroic Throw.
Glyphs
- Glyph of Spell Reflection reduces the cooldown of Spell Reflection by 5 seconds, up from 1 second

Dungeons & Raids

New dungeons available for partial testing.
- Zul'Aman has returned as a level-85 5-player Heroic dungeon featuring a revamp of the original dungeon and improved loot!
- Zul'Gurub has returned as a level-85 5-player Heroic dungeon featuring all-new encounters, achievements, and improved loot!
- Both dungeons will be in a new Dungeon Finder difficulty tier above the current level-85 Heroic dungeons and offer epic-quality item level 353 loot.
- These dungeons may only partially be available for testing at this time. Stay tuned for additional updates.

Blackwing Descent
- Flash Bomb (Golem Sentry ability) now has a more clear warning visual.
- Magmaw now triggers a raid emote when summoning Lava Parasites.
- Further improvements have been made in the Maloriak encounter to avoid Flash Freeze targeting the tanks.

The gold amounts on the following encounters have been substantially reduced: Flame Leviathan, Magtheridon, Gruul the Dragonkiller, Doom Lord Kazzak, and all encounters in Karazhan.

Guilds

The Guild Perk, Cash Flow, no longer prints out text to the Chat Log. Instead, the daily amount deposited is shown in the Guild Vault Money Log. In addition, players can view the weekly contribution in a new window at the bottom of the Money Log.

We have added two new custom guild tabards as Guild Rewards. The tabards are account bound and offer a bonus to gaining guild reputation.

Items

The PvP Horde and Alliance trinkets have a new spell effect.

Item Sets
- The current damage-dealing death knight 4-piece raid set bonus now also grants increased attack power when Killing Machine triggers, as well as when the death knight gains Death Runes).
- The current Holy paladin 4-piece raid set bonus now grants 540 Spirit for 6 seconds after casting Holy Shock.

Professions

All major cities will now have every type of profession trainer and their associated trade supply vendors.

PvP

Battlegrounds
- The Focused Assault and Brutal Assault buffs have changed.
  - After 3 minutes of both teams having the flag, both flag carriers will get Focused Assault, which increases damage taken by 10%.
  - Every minute afterward, an additional stack will be applied to increase damage taken by an additional 10%.
  - After 7 minutes, Brutal Assault will be applied in place of Focused Assault. In additional to the damage debuff, this debuff also caps the player's movement speed at 100%. The damage taken debuff works the same and will add 10% to the debuff up to a maximum of 100% damage taken.
- The Battle for Gilneas
  - Graveyard Changes
    - Players who die at a control point that they own will now be teleported to the next closest graveyard, instead of the one at which they died.
    - If a player's team owns the Mine and Waterworks, and dies at Waterworks, they will be teleported to the Mine.
    - If an Alliance player's team only owns Lighthouse, and dies at Lighthouse, they will respawn at their base.
    - If a Horde player's team owns Waterworks and Mine, and dies at Lighthouse, they will respawn at Waterworks.
- Twin Peaks
  - Graveyard Changes
    - Players will now only spawn at their base graveyard when they die in the enemy base.
    - Defending players will respawn at the middle graveyard.
    - Midfield players will respawn at the middle graveyard.
    - Attacking players will respawn at their base graveyard.

Quests & Creatures

A handful of quests have been added to Northern Barrens to provide more level 18-20 content. Look for new quests at Nozzlepot's Outpost and Darsok's Outpost.

Races

The gnomish racial ability, Escape Artist, is no longer affected by the global cooldowns triggered by other abilities.

The human racial ability, Every Man for Himself, has a new spell effect.

User Interface

Work has begun on a new Looking for Guild system. Further details will be provided when we are ready for feedback.

Like the Focus Frame, the character Unit and Target Frames can now be unlocked and moved to one's content.

Spells bound to a key now start to be cast when the button is pressed down by default, instead of waiting for the key to go up. This is an option that can be turned off in the Interface menu under Combat. Mouse clicking has not changed and operates on mouse click up.

World of Warcraft patch 4.0.6

2011-03-05T18:36:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: The official patch notes have already been updated to include a new Achievements section, a paladin bug fix concerning Holy Power, a number of changes to current raid boss encounters, and a note about Inscription Ink Traders. Check out the complete notes after the jump.

It's official: World of Warcraft patch 4.0.6 is going live today. And check it out for more details.

World of Warcraft Client Patch 4.0.6

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm patch 4.0.6 is now available on all realms! Below you'll find the official patch notes, last updated 1:45 PM PST, February 9.

The latest client patch notes can be found here.

Visit our Bug Report forum for a list of patch 4.0.6 known issues.

Hotfixes made after patch 4.0.6 can be found here.

Table of Contents

Achievements

Classes

Dungeons & Raids

Guilds

Items

Professions

Quests & Creatures

Races

User Interface

General Bug Fixes (fixes pertaining specifically to the sections listed above are noted within those sections)

Achievements

Two new achievements have been added for earning exalted reputation with 45 and 50 factions respectively. The title The Exalted is now awarded for earning exalted reputation with 50 factions, up from 40.

A new achievement, Just Another Day in Tol Barad, has been added for completing all of the Tol Barad daily quests.

Achievement Bug Fixes
- Players should correctly receive the achievement Faster Than the Speed of Light (Halls of Origination) if they die prior to the party meeting the criteria.
- The achievement criteria for Prototype Prodigy (Deadmines) correctly resets after a wipe.

Death Knights

Death Coil damage has been reduced by roughly 10%.

Icebound Fortitude now breaks stuns when used, in addition to providing immunity to them.

Necrotic Strike's absorption effect is now reduced by the target's resilience. In addition, its debuff duration has been reduced to 10 seconds, down from 15.

The spell hit bonus previously given by Virulence (Unholy) has been rolled into the Runic Focus passive effect that all death knights possess.

Talent Specializations
- Blood
  - Bone Shield now has 4 charges, up from 3.
  - Crimson Scourge has been redesigned slightly. Instead of a 50/100% chance to make the next Blood Boil free when Plague Strike is used on a target with Blood Plague, the talent now gives a 5/10% chance to provide a free Blood Boil when the death knight lands any melee attack on a Blood Plagued target.
  - Heart Strike now deals 175% weapon damage plus 15% per disease, up from 120% plus 10% per disease.
  - Improved Death Strike now increases the damage of Death Strike by 30/60/90%, up from 15/30/45%.
  - If Death Strike is used while a Blood Shield is already active, the new absorb will stack with the old one instead of replacing it.
  - Scarlet Fever now applies via Blood Plague, rather than Blood Boil.
  - Will of the Necropolis no longer refunds a Blood Rune when it resets Rune Tap's cooldown. Instead it makes the next Rune Tap free while Will of the Necropolis is active.
- Frost
  - Chilblains now also causes Chains of Ice to root the target for 1.5/3 seconds.
  - Howling Blast now deals 40% less damage to all targets other than the primary target of the spell.
  - Hungering Cold now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
  - Might of the Frozen Wastes now also increases all melee damage by 4/8/12% while wielding a two-handed weapon.
- Unholy
  - Blightcaller (Mastery) has been redesigned and renamed Dreadblade. It increases all Shadow damage by 2.5% per point of mastery.
  - Dark Transformation now increases pet damage by 80%, down from 100%.
  - Death's Advance (new talent): While both Unholy Runes are depleted, movement-impairing effects cannot reduce the death knight below 75/100% of normal movement speed.
  - Desecration is now also triggered by Necrotic Strike.
  - The ratio of runic power return from Magic Suppression has been reduced by roughly one third.
  - Rage of Rivendare now increases strike damage by 12/24/36%, down from 15/30/45%.
  - Runic Corruption procs while the aura is already active now add 3 seconds to the existing aura duration, instead of simply refreshing/overwriting the existing aura.
  - Shadow Infusion now increases pet damage by 8% per stack, down from 10%.
  - Sudden Doom is now triggered only from main-hand auto attacks, and is normalized according to weapon speed rather than having a fixed percentage chance.
  - Unholy Might (passive) has been reduced to a 5% Strength increase, down from 10%.
  - Virulence has been redesigned. It now grants 10/20/30% additional disease damage.

Glyphs
- Glyph of Dark Succor (new glyph) raises the minimum healing done by Death Strike from 7% to 15% of maximum health, but only while in Unholy or Frost Presence.
- Glyph of Death's Embrace no longer refunds Runic Power when self-healing via Lichborne.

Runeforging
- Swordbreaking and Swordshattering now reduce disarm duration by 60%, up from 50%.

Death Knight Bug Fixes
- Blood of the North is no longer incorrectly increasing Blood Strike damage by 10%.
- The tooltip for Blood Presence was giving an incorrect value and has been corrected.
- The amount of bonus damage Blood Strike was receiving per disease was inconsistent with its tooltip and has been amended.
- Crimson Scourge will no longer proc if Blood Plague is not present on the target.
- Death Grip has a minimum range requirement of 8 yards against players, but this was not stated in the tooltip. The tooltip has been updated.
- Desecration should stay in place while on the Alliance Gunship in Deepholm.
- When a character is raised as a ghoul with Raise Ally, there is no longer a considerable pause after losing control of the ghoul before being returned to the corpse or graveyard.
- The Scourge Strike tooltip is now correctly augmented by Rage of Rivendare.
- The shadow portion of Scourge Strike was receiving more than 10% increased damage from Frost Presence and has been corrected.
- The shadow portion of Scourge Strike no longer incorrectly still receives a 13% spell damage increase from Earth and Moon.
- Glyph Fixes
  - The Chains of Ice tooltip is now correctly augmented by Glyph of Chains of Ice.
  - Glyph of Raise Ally now correctly affects the risen ally's health.
  - The Vampiric Blood tooltip became awkwardly worded after applying Glyph of Vampiric Blood. We made the words less awkward

Druids

Barkskin is no longer dispellable.

Entangling Roots now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Healing Touch is now trained at level 78, up from level 3.

Hibernate now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Lacerate damage has been reduced by approximately 20%.

Mangle (Bear Form) weapon damage (at level 80+) has been reduced to 235%, down from 300%.

Mangle (Cat Form) weapon damage percent (at level 80+) has been increased to 460%, up from 360%.

Maul damage has been reduced by approximately 20%.

Moonfire mana cost has been reduced from 18% to 9%.

Mount Up: This guild perk now applies to Flight Form and Swift Flight Form as well.

Nature's Grasp now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Nourish is now trained at level 8, down from level 78.

Omen of Clarity can no longer trigger from helpful spells (aka heals), unless the Restoration talent Malfurion's Gift is chosen.

Prowl is no longer broken by enemies using Demoralizing Shout or Demoralizing Roar.

Rake damage has been reduced by 10%.

Rejuvenation is now trained at level 3, down from level 8. In addition, its mana cost is now 20% of base mana.

Rip damage has been reduced by 10%.

Shapeshifts: Entering or leaving a shapeshift no longer cancels root effects. It continues to cancel movement slowing effects.

Shred weapon damage percent (at level 80+) has been increased to 450%, up from 350%.

Skull Bash's lockout time has been reduced to 4 seconds, down from 5.

Soothe is now instant cast, down from 1.5 seconds.

Worgen and troll druids now have new art for Swift Flight Form.

Talent Specializations
- Balance
  - Fungal growth duration has been increased to 20 seconds, up from 10. In addition, it should now be much more responsive when detonating Wild Mushrooms.
  - Moonkin Form now grants 15% damage reduction instead of increased armor. In addition, shapeshifting in or out of this form now breaks roots. Note this is not stated in the tooltip.
  - The Shooting Stars buff duration has been increased to 12 seconds, up from 8 seconds.
  - Starfall will no longer strike targets that are not in combat and will now drop stars at a slightly faster rate.
  - Sunfire mana cost has been reduced from 18% to 9%.
  - Total Eclipse (Mastery) benefit from mastery increased by approximately 33%.
  - Typhoon mana cost has been reduced by 50%.
  - Wild Mushroom is now instant cast, down from 0.5 seconds. In addition, the radius of detonation has been increased to 6 yards, up from 3, and damage done increased by 30%.
- Feral
  - Berserk (instant Mangle proc) now has a new Spell Alert identifier. In addition, Berserk no longer breaks Fear or makes the druid immune to Fear.
  - Blood in the Water: Timing on this effect has been improved so that Ferocious Bite will immediately refresh Rip, rather than be slightly delayed (which gave a chance for the Rip to expire despite being refreshed).
  - Infected Wounds now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
  - Pulverize weapon damage percent has been reduced to 80%, down from 100%.
- Restoration
  - Disentanglement (new specialization): Causes shapeshifting to remove roots in addition to snares.
  - Empowered Touch now also affects Regrowth. In addition, after Tree of Life is no longer active, this talent will only refresh the most recently cast or refreshed Lifebloom, and will not refresh other copies of Lifebloom.
  - Natural Shapeshifter has been reduced to a 3/6-second increase to Tree of Life's duration, down from 5/10.
  - Nature's Bounty no longer affects Swiftmend, but now has a new effect. When the druid has Rejuvenation on 3 or more targets, the cast time of Nourish is reduced by 10/20/30%.
  - Symbiosis (Mastery) benefit from mastery increased by approximately 16%.
  - Tree of Life duration has been reduced to 25 seconds, down from 30.
  - Wild Growth healing has been increased by 30%, and the cooldown has been reduced to 8 seconds, down from 10.

Glyphs
- Glyph of Entangling Roots redesigned. It now reduces the cast time of Entangling Roots by 0.2 seconds, rather than making it instant cast.
- Glyph of Regrowth now causes the heal-over-time effect to refresh itself on targets at or below 50% health, up from 25%.
- Glyph of Wrath now increases damage done by Wrath by 10% and no longer requires Insect Swarm on the target.

Druid Bug Fixes
- Druid forms now have an Archaeology Survey animation.
- Balance of Power's tooltip now states that spell hit rating is increased only by Spirit gained from items and effects.
- Druids can correctly cast Barkskin while silenced.
- Feral Charge: Cat should always turn the druid around to face the back of the target.
- Hurricane now remains at the same location it was cast at while on a moving transport.
- The mana return effect of Leader of the Pack is now consistent with its tooltip.
- Maul and other Feral druid ability tooltips should now show the correct damage.
- Druids in Moonkin Form should now correctly be able to mount.
- Rank 1 of Naturalist is now reducing the cast time by what it states on the tooltip.
- Nature's Swiftness is no longer consumed when casting Entangling Roots that became instant cast via Glyph of Entangling Roots.
- The instant Rejuvenation heal from Gift of the Earthmother should no longer gain bonus healing from haste too soon, and should now correctly benefit from Symbiosis.
- The Thick Hide tooltip should now reflect the new increased values.
- The tooltip for Thrash's bleed effect listed the amount of damage per tick rather than the total damage for the effect. This has been corrected.
- Using Track Humanoids while in Cat Form should no longer cause loot windows to automatically close the first time they are opened.
- Druids should now make the correct laugh and cry emote sounds while in Tree of Life Form.
- Wild Mushroom's tooltip now shows the magic school.
- Glyph Fixes
  - Glyph of Ferocious Bite now correctly augments the Ferocious Bite tooltip.

Hunters

Aimed Shot weapon damage has been increased to 200%, up from 150%. In addition, the base cast time has been reduced to 2.4 seconds, down from 3.

Arcane Shot damage has been increased by 15%.

Aspect of the Wild, Aspect of the Hawk, and Aspect of the Fox can now be cast while mounted.

Hunters can now use Auto Shot while moving.

Casting Trap Launcher, Distracting Shot, and Scare Beast now cancel Auto Shot when cast. This is to make it easier to crowd control creatures with Auto Shot while moving enabled.

Concussive Shot duration has been increased to 6 seconds, up from 4.

Deterrence now provides 100% chance for melee attacks to miss instead of 100% parry chance. This means that attacks that cannot be parried, notably some rogue abilities, can now be prevented by Deterrence, and the hunter will gain the benefit of Deterrence even if disarmed.

Dust Cloud's cooldown and duration have been modified to make it closer aligned with Tailspin (same effect, different pet).

Freezing Trap now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Kill Command's damage has been increased by 20%.

Kill Shot's attack power scaling has been increased by 50%.

Master's Call now has a 35-second cooldown, down from 1 minute, and its range has been increased to 40 yards, up from 25. In addition, the visual effect is more obvious.

Wing Clip now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Talent Specializations
- Beast Mastery
  - Animal Handler now provides a passive 25% bonus to attack power, up from 15%.
- Marksmanship
  - Chimera Shot's overall damage has been increased by roughly 50%.
  - Wild Quiver (Mastery): Chance for this to trigger per mastery has been increased by approximately 17%.
- Survival
  - Black Arrow damage has been reduced by 15%.
  - Explosive Shot damage has been reduced by 15%.
  - Hunter vs. Wild has been increased to 5/10/15% Stamina, up from 4/8/12%.
  - Into the Wilderness (passive) has been reduced to a 10% Agility increase, down from 15%.

Pets
- Pets now have 70% of the master's armor, rather than a different value based on which type of pet they are.
- Shale Spiders now correctly have a special ability (Web Wrap).
- Bad Manner (monkey) now properly breaks from damage.

Glyphs
- Glyph of Concussive Shot redesigned. It now limits the maximum run speed of the target while Concussive Shot is active.

Hunter Bug Fixes
- Aimed Shot no longer ignores the Fire! buff when cast by macro.
- Camouflage is now breaking when the hunter's traps deal damage to a target.
- Chimera Shot's particle effect animations should now display correctly.
- Cobra Shot now properly increases the duration of the Serpent Spread Serpent Sting.
- The Focus Fire spell effect is now cooler than your best collection of green rectangles.
- Wild Quiver's effect per point of mastery value should now be consistent.
- Before shooting, male undead hunters will no longer look away from their targets.
- Pet Fixes
  - Pet families added in Cataclysm should not be missing talents.
  - Pets should fight all underwater creatures, even if the hunter is out of melee range.
  - Ancient Hysteria should not able to affect low-level characters.
  - Ancient Hysteria now correctly affects pets.
  - Embrace of the Shale Spider now provides resistances so that those resistances are not lost if this buff overwrites Blessing of Forgotten Kings.
  - Ferocity-category pets in the dog and fox families now have access to the pet talent Charge.
  - Mobility can correctly be learned by land-based hunter pets.
  - Ravage no longer counts toward stun diminishing returns.
  - Undead hunters now start with Revive Pet on the action bar.
  - The pet Spellbook entry for Serpent Swiftness now shows its rank.
  - Shale Spiders are no longer missing a special ability.
  - The Shell Shield (Terrorpene) visual has been enlarged and should now be seen when cast.
  - The tooltip for the armor value in the Character pane should now be showing the correct amount of armor granted to pets.

Mages

Arcane Barrage mana cost has been reduced by 8%.

Arcane Blast mana cost has been reduced by 12%.

The mana costs of Arcane Brilliance and Dalaran Brilliance have been reduced by approximately 16%, making them roughly equal to the cost of Mark of the Wild.

Counterspell lockout duration reduced to 7 seconds, down from 8.

Fireball mana cost has been reduced to 9% of base mana.

Flame Orb now ignores critters.

Frostfire Bolt mana cost has been reduced to 9% of base mana.

Mage Armor now reduces the duration of magic effects by 35%, down from 50%.

Molten Armor, Frost Armor, and Mage Armor no longer cost mana.

Polymorph now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Ring of Frost: Radius shrunk to 8 yards, and inner "safe" radius is now 4.7 yards (exactly matching graphic). Dispelling the effect of Ring of Frost will now make the target immune to being refrozen for 3 seconds. If a second Ring of Frost is cast by the same mage while the first is still active (via Cold Snap), the first will now disappear and cease functioning. In addition, Ring of Frost now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

When a mage uses the Invisibility spell, it will now also cause their pet Water Elemental to become invisible.

Talent Specializations
- Arcane
  - Slow now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
- Fire
  - Firestarter now allows the mage to cast Scorch while moving (regardless of which armor spell is used), and no longer eliminates Molten Armor's critical strike chance reduction.
  - Flashburn (Mastery) benefit per mastery has been increased by 12%.
  - Living Bomb mana cost has been reduced by 22%.
- Frost
  - Deep Freeze damage done has been reduced by 20%.
  - Fingers of Frost can no longer be dispelled and now also increases Ice Lance damage by 15%.
  - Frost Specialization now only grants 2 base points of mastery (instead of 8), reducing all Frost damage to frozen targets by 15% from previous values. However, Frost Specialization now increases base Frostbolt damage by 15%.

Mage Bug Fixes
- Arcane Power now has its tooltip updated when Glyph of Arcane Power is active.
- The attachment point of Cone of Cold was too far left and has been adjusted on male troll models.
- Evocation was returning less mana than the tooltip stated it should. This has been corrected.
- Flame Orb's tooltip should now state how much damage it will explode for after the Fire Power talent is chosen.
- Rank 1 Frostfire Orb is no longer applying a debuff that incorrectly states that it snares its target.
- The Hurricane weapon enchant should no longer proc when Polymorph is cast.
- Molten Armor tooltips now display the correct information.
- Nether Vortex was causing Arcane Blast to yield a string error when Arcane Blast was reflected. It shouldn't do that.
- When Presence of Mind was active, Conjure Mana Gem was not becoming an instant cast spell if used to refresh a stack of 2 or less Mana Gems. This has been fixed.
- Presence of Mind is no longer consumed when Flame Orb is cast.
- Ring of Frost can now be cast and works properly on transports (this includes elevators, trapdoors, etc.).
- Glyph Fixes
  - Glyph of Arcane Power should correctly reduce the global cooldown of Blink, Mana Shield, and Mirror Image to 0.
  - Ice Barrier's tooltip is now correctly updated by Glyph of Ice Barrier.

Paladins

The mana costs of Blessing of Might and Blessing of Kings have been increased by approximately 217%, making them roughly equal to the cost of Mark of the Wild.

Crusader Strike weapon damage percent has been increased to 135%, up from 115%.

Divine Light mana cost has been increased by approximately 10%.

Divine Plea now lasts for 9 seconds, down from 15. It grants 4% mana per tick, instead of 2%, for a total of 12% mana, up from 10%.

Flash of Light mana cost has been increased by approximately 10%.

Forbearance
- The duration has been lowered to 1 minute, down from 2.
- Lay on Hands now causes Forbearance on the target. It used to only cause it when cast on the paladin. This was an old design from when Divine Protection caused Forbearance and the paladin didn't want to prevent a tank from using their defensive cooldown.
- Lay on Hands cannot be a critical effect and will not be affected by most abilities which modify healing (such as Beacon of Light). In addition, Lay on Hands is no longer on the global cooldown.
- Since only Divine Shield, Lay on Hands and Hand of Protection cause Forbearance, the tooltips have been adjusted to better explain the mechanic.

Holy Light mana cost has been increased by approximately 10%.

Holy Wrath no longer counts nearby critters when dividing damage among its targets.

Inquisition is no longer dispellable.

Rebuke can now be trained by all paladins at level 54. Existing characters will need to visit their trainer, even if they had talented Rebuke before.

Seal of Truth: All single target attacks (including Judgement, Hammer of Wrath, Exorcism, and Templar's Verdict) can now trigger this seal.

Talent Specializations
- Holy
  - Aura Mastery: This ability no longer increases the benefit granted by Crusader Aura.
  - Denounce now has a spell overlay.
  - Protector of the Innocent heals for 30% less.
- Protection
  - Eternal Glory: The chance to not consume Holy Power from this talent now also applies to not consuming the clearcasting effect generated by Divine Purpose.
  - Vindication no longer allows Hammer of Justice to interrupt stun-immune targets. With Rebuke baseline, this functionality is no longer necessary.
- Retribution
  - Act of Sacrifice will no longer cause Cleanse to remove movement impairing effects from vehicles the paladin is riding.
  - Divine Purpose: The chance for applicable abilities to generate Holy Power has been reduced to 7/15%, down from 20/40%, but instead of generating 1 Holy Power, the next applicable ability used consumes no Holy Power and acts as if the paladin has 3 Holy Power.
  - Divine Storm weapon damage percent increased from 80% to 100%.
  - Hand of Light (Mastery): A percentage of the damage done by Templar's Verdict, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm is done as additional Holy damage. This Mastery now grants a 2.1% increase to Holy damage per mastery, down from 2.5%.
  - Repentance is no longer broken from damage done by Censure (Seal of Truth).
  - The Rebuke talent has been replaced with a new passive talent, Sacred Shield. Paladins who had Rebuke before will automatically have Sacred Shield. Sacred When reduced below 30% health, paladins gain the Sacred Shield effect. The Sacred Shield absorbs X damage and increases healing received by 20%. Lasts 15 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds. Undispellable.
  - Seals of Command will no longer trigger twice on each swing with Seal of Truth.
  - Zealotry is no longer dispellable.

Glyphs
- Glyph of Divine Plea now adds 6% mana, for a total of 18% over 9 seconds.

Paladin Bug Fixes
- The Silence debuff from Avenger's Shield was using the Dazed visual effect, and its Daze debuff did not have a visible effect. This has been remedied.
- The damage bonus from Communion is no longer applied even when the paladin has no paladin auras active.
- Crusader Strike, Holy Shock, and Hammer of the Righteous no longer incorrectly grant Holy Power from a missed attack.
- Divine Storm no longer incorrectly highlights when Hand of Light procs.
- Exorcism no longer re-targets whomever it does damage to when it finishes casting.
- The healing amount in the buff tooltip for Holy Radiance is now accurate.
- Pursuit of Justice is now providing Holy Power when the paladin gets stunned by the Fire mage talent Impact. Conversely, Pursuit of Justice is no longer granting Holy Power when the Paladin is hit by Holy Wrath.
- Repentance tooltip now states that it does not break Censure damage.
- Rank 1 of Shield of the Templar was reducing the cooldown of Guardian of Ancient Kings by 45 seconds, which is inconsistent with the scaling of ranks 2 and 3. This has been adjusted.
- The tooltip for Tower of Radiance indicated that Holy Light would generate a charge of Holy Power. This has been fixed.
- Word of Glory no longer resets the swing timer.
- Glyph Fixes
  - The damage-over-time effect of Exorcism added by Glyph of Exorcism is now correctly affected by Exorcism's damage.
  - The tooltip for Holy Wrath is now updated to reflect changes when Glyph of Holy Wrath is active.
  - The Glyph of Light of Dawn is now updating the tooltip for Light of Dawn.
  - The Glyph of Seal of Insight now requires level 32 to be consistent with when Seal of Insight can be learned from the trainer.
  - The Glyph of Templar's Verdict is now updating the tooltip of Templar's Verdict.

Priests

The duration of Levitate has been increased to 10 minutes, up from 2.

The mana cost of Power Word: Fortitude has been reduced by approximately 68%, making it roughly equal to the cost of Mark of the Wild.

The mana cost of Power Word: Shield has been increased by approximately 31%, but its effect has been increased by 208%.

The mana cost of Renew has been reduced by 24%.

The mana cost of Shadow Protection has been reduced by approximately 65%, making it roughly equal to the cost of Mark of the Wild.

Mind Blast now does 18% more damage than Mind Spike.

Mind Control now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Mind Sear can now be channeled on friendly targets in addition to enemy targets. In addition, Mind Sear's damage has been increased by roughly 15%.

Prayer of Healing effectiveness has been reduced by 15%.

Talent Specializations
- Discipline
  - Divine Aegis: Critical effects from Prayer of Healing now award a bonus amount in addition to the default, always-proc Divine Aegis effect.
  - Grace is no longer limited to one target at a time.
  - Focused Will now procs when the priest is critically hit, in addition to its current effect.
  - Pain Suppression is no longer dispellable.
  - Penance mana cost has been increased by 7%, but healing has been increased by 20%.
  - Strength of Soul now occurs when the priest casts Inner Focus on oneself, rather than Power Word: Shield. In addition, Strength of Soul now also causes the priest to become immune to silence, interrupt, and dispel effects for 2/4 seconds after using Inner Focus.
- Holy
  - Blessed Resilience will now proc when the priest is critically hit, in addition to its current effect.
  - Chakra
    - Chakra states now last 1 minute, up from 30 seconds.
    - Binding Heal and Holy Word: Serenity now refresh the duration of Renew on the target, in addition to the other direct heals.
    - Binding Heal, Flash Heal, and Greater Heal can now trigger Chakra: Serenity.
    - Mind Spike can now trigger Chakra: Chastise.
  - Circle of Healing effectiveness has been increased by 30%.
  - Desperate Prayer now heals the priest for 30% of their total health, up from a very subpar value.
  - Guardian Spirit: The absorb/heal from this ability can now never exceed 200% of the maximum health of the target.
  - Holy Concentration now increases the amount of mana regeneration from Spirit while in combat by an additional 15/30%, down from 20/40%.
  - Holy Word: Chastise now has a 30-second cooldown, up from 25. In addition, it properly breaks from damage.
  - Lightwell's health has been increased by 50% (for PvP purposes).
  - Serendipity now has Spell Alert and Floating Combat Text feedback support.
  - Surge of Light can now also proc from Flash Heal and Greater Heal, and can now also critically hit.
- Shadow
  - Shadow Orbs benefit from mastery has been increased by approximately 16%.
  - Vampiric Embrace now lasts until canceled.

Glyphs
- Glyph of Mind Flay no longer requires Shadow Word: Pain to be on the target.
- Glyph of Pain Suppression has been renamed Glyph of Desperation and now allows Guardian Spirit to be cast while stunned, in addition to Pain Suppression.
- Glyph of Psychic Horror now reduces the cooldown of Psychic Horror by 30 seconds, down from 60.
- Glyph of Spirit of Redemption has been converted into Glyph of Prayer of Mending, which increases the healing done by the first charge of Prayer of Mending by 60%.

Priest Bug Fixes
- Atonement now has the correct healing range listed in the tooltip.
- Blessed Resilience rank 1 and 2 tooltips are now consistent with the amount of increased healing.
- Dispersion should no longer allow priests to become permanently invisible when mounting.
- Dispersion correctly reduces the damage dealt by Deep Wounds and Piercing Shots.
- Focused Will rank 1 and 2 tooltips are now consistent with the amount of damage reduced.
- Heal, Flash Heal, Greater Heal, and Binding Heal effects are now consistent with their tooltips.
- Holy Concentration now has correct percentages listed in the tooltip.
- Holy Word: Serenity now correctly grants healing spells cast by the priest an extra 25% chance to critically hit.
- Inner Fire no longer consumes mana after learning Inner Sanctum.
- Inner Will now correctly reduces the mana cost of Power Word: Barrier.
- Lightwell healing now matches its tooltip description.
- Undead and blood elf priests are no longer gaining aggro from friendly guards when casting Mind Control on enemy NPCs.
- Unnecessary string errors should no longer occur when casting Power Word: Barrier.
- Prayer of Mending will now properly return an error when cast on a target with a more powerful Prayer of Mending active.
- Rapture's tooltip now has the correct percentages listed.
- Shadow Orbs' tooltip showed a 0% increase in damage and did not give an increase of damage until additional mastery rating was added. This has been corrected.
- Sin and Punishment will no longer fear players that are not flagged for PvP.
- Surge of Light is no longer consumed without benefit if it triggers while a Flash Heal is being cast.
- Glyph Fixes
  - Critical heals from Glyph of Dispel Magic properly proc Divine Aegis.

Rogues

Blind now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Combat Readiness now lasts for 20 seconds, down from 30 seconds, but the Combat Insight stacking buff lasts 10 seconds, up from 6 seconds.

Crippling Poison now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Garrote now costs 45 Energy, down from 50.

Sap now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Smoke Bomb now lasts for 5 seconds, down from 10 seconds.

Stealth is no longer broken by enemies using Demoralizing Shout or Demoralizing Roar.

Talent Specializations
- Assassination
  - Deadly Momentum critical strike bonus now lasts for 15 seconds, up from 10.
- Combat
  - Blade Flurry is now a toggle that can be turned off by pressing the button again. In addition, this ability no longer has a fixed duration, but will go on cooldown for 10 seconds after being canceled (similar to Stealth). In addition, Blade Flurry now reduces energy generation by 30% while active, up from 20%.
  - Main Gauche (Mastery) now provides a chance to deal an attack for 100% of main-hand damage. This attack can trigger Combat Potency.
  - Restless Blades now also reduces the cooldown of Redirect.
  - Revealing Strike now increases finisher effectiveness by 35% (45% glyphed), up from 20% (30% glyphed).
  - Vitality now increases attack power by 25%, up from 20%.
- Subtlety
  - Elusiveness now reduces the cooldown of Cloak of Shadows by 10/20 seconds, down from 15/30 seconds.
  - Executioner (Mastery) has been increased from 2% to 2.5% per point.
  - Find Weakness now grants 35/70% armor reduction, up from 25/50%.
  - Preparation no longer resets the cooldown of Evasion.
  - Sanguinary Vein now gives a rogue a 50/100% chance for their own Bleed effects to not break their Gouge.
  - Shadowstep's cooldown has been increased to 24 seconds, up from 20 seconds.
  - Sinister Calling now grants 30% Agility, up from 25%, and increases Backstab and Hemorrhage damage by an additional 40%, up from 25%.

Glyphs
- Glyph of Garrote now increases the duration of Garrote by 1.5 seconds, down from 2.

Rogue Bug Fixes
- Cloak of Shadows now functions properly to protect the rogue from the following boss and creature abilities: Gravity Well (Terrastra, The Bastion of Twilight), Burning Corruption (Crimsonborne Seer, Grim Batol), Lava Fissure (Slabhide, The Stonecore), Geyser (Lady Naz'jar, Throne of the Tides), Noxious Mire (Naz'jar Sentinel, Throne of the Tides).
- Cheat Death was activating by a warlock's Chaos Bolt but not working. Chaos Bolt will still trigger Cheat Death, but will not kill the rogue.
- Eviscerate was showing reduced energy cost at low levels, even though the cost should remain 35 energy. This has been corrected.
- Feint correctly reduces Quake damage from Rom'ogg Bonecrusher (Blackrock Caverns).
- The Honor Among Thieves buff icon is now correctly displayed for the rogue, and not just for the rogue's party members.
- Ruthlessness has the correct chance to proc when Envenom is used.
- Glyph Fixes
  - Blade Flurry's tooltip is now correctly augmented by Glyph of Blade Flurry.
  - The Hemorrhage tooltip is now correctly updated to reflect the bleed effect when Glyph of Hemorrhage is applied.
  - The Preparation tooltip is now augmented by Glyph of Preparation.

Shaman

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

Flametongue Weapon procs now deal roughly 20% less damage.

Healing Rain now has a 40-yard range, up from 30, to be consistent with other shaman heals.

Hex now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Purge now dispels a single effect instead of two.

Spiritwalker's Grace duration has been increased to 15 seconds, up from 10.

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

The Windfury Weapon proc can now trigger 3 additional attacks, up from 2.

Talent Specializations
- Elemental Combat
  - Earthquake damage has been increased by approximately 10%.
  - Elemental Overload (Mastery) procs of Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning can now generate Rolling Thunder charges.
  - Lava Burst's damage has been increased by roughly 10%.
- Enhancement
  - Flametongue Weapon damage now scales from attack power instead of spell power (for Enhancement shaman only).
  - Purge no longer has its mana cost reduced by Mental Quickness.
- Restoration
  - Cleansing Waters no longer fires its heal effect twice when a shaman removes a Magic and a Curse debuff with a single cast.
  - Deep Healing (Mastery) has been increased to 3% per point, up from 2.5%.
  - Earth Shield can no longer be dispelled.
  - Greater Healing Wave mana cost has been increased by 10%; healing done has been increased by 20%.
  - Mana Tide Totem has been redesigned. The totem no longer multiplies the Spirit of those affected by it. It instead gives a flat amount of Spirit equal to 400% of the casting shaman's Spirit, exclusive of short-term Spirit buffs affecting the shaman when the totem is dropped. In addition, its effects are now raid-wide.

Glyphs
- Glyph of Hex now reduces the cooldown by 10 seconds, down from 15.

Shaman Bug Fixes
- Ancestral Resolve correctly reduces the damage done by Chaos Bolt.
- Earthquake's mana cost is now correctly reduced by Elemental Focus' clearcasting proc.
- Elemental Oath properly increases the damage of Earthquake.
- Player movement speed cannot be reduced below 100% while in Ghost Wolf if the player is or has been in an indoor environment.
- Healing Rain shouldn't fail to complete casting if a low-level player or NPC is within its targeted location.
- Reincarnation can now correctly be used after Soulstone Resurrection or Rebirth has already been used on the shaman during a boss encounter.
- Glyph Fixes
  - The tooltip for Elemental Mastery now updates after applying the Glyph of Elemental Mastery.
  - The spell buff icon for Ghost Wolf now updates when Glyph of Ghost Wolf is applied.
  - The spell tooltip for Grounding Totem now updates when Glyph of Grounding Totem is applied.
  - The tooltip for Healing Stream Totem now updates to reflect the additional spell resistance benefits granted by Glyph of Healing Stream Totem.
  - The spell tooltip for Healing Wave now updates when Glyph of Healing Wave is applied.

Warlocks

Curse of Exhaustion now reduces movement speed by 30%, down from 50%. Its range has been increased to 40 yards, up from 30.

Demon Armor and Fel Armor no longer cost mana and last until canceled.

Devour (Felhunter) cooldown has been increased to 20 seconds, up from 8. Devour is no longer able to be auto-cast.

Drain Mana has been removed from the game.

Fear now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Fel Armor has been redesigned. It now surrounds the caster with fel energy, increasing spell power and causing the warlock to be healed for 3% of any single-target spell damage he or she deals.

Seduction (Succubus) now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Talent Specializations
- Affliction
  - Soul Swap can no longer be dispelled (the aura given to the warlock between swapping).
  - Unstable Affliction's silence effect has been reduced to 4 seconds, down from 5.
- Demonology
  - Demonic Aegis now increases the healing effect of Fel Armor by 50/100%.
  - Demonic Rebirth now highlights summoning spells when active.
  - Demon Soul: Imp redesigned. It now increases the critical strike chance of all non instant cast Destruction spells by 30%, rather than increasing critical strike damage. Duration reduced to 20 seconds.
  - Felstorm (Felguard) damage has been reduced by 20%.
  - Immolation Aura damage has been reduced by roughly 30%.
  - Inferno no longer increases the radius of Hellfire, but instead increases the duration of Immolate by 6 seconds in addition to its existing effect.
  - Master Demonologist (Mastery) benefit from mastery increased by approximately 33%.
- Destruction
  - Burning Embers damage has been reduced by 15%.
  - Fiery Apocalypse (Mastery) benefit from mastery increased by approximately 8%.
  - Improved Soul Fire now increases Fire and Shadow damage done by 4/8%, rather than 7/15% spell haste. In addition, this talent has been moved to tier-3 Destruction, switching places with Aftermath.
  - Shadow and Flame can now proc from Incinerate in addition to Shadow Bolt.

Warlock Bug Fixes
- Rank 2 of Backdraft should no longer have charges consumed when casting Immolate.
- The spell animation for Demon Circle: Summon no longer persists through death.
- Demon Leap should no longer cause players to pass through the environment at the entrance/exit of Orgrimmar.
- Drain Life cast when under the effects of Soulburn no longer has higher damage than the normal version of Drain Life.
- Empowered Imp can no longer proc if the warlock does not have the talent.
- Hellfire will not proc the Muradin's Spyglass buff without hitting an enemy target.
- Warlocks with the Jinx talent who have an active Curse of the Elements on a target should no longer be interrupted while eating or drinking.
- Nether Protection should now proc properly from all associated abilities.
- Rain of Fire now remains at the same location it was cast at while on a moving transport.
- Ritual of Summoning should no longer yield graphical issues with the created portal.
- Casting Soulburn during the global cooldown of a Soulburn ability, and while under the effects of another self-buff, was sometimes causing Soulburn abilities to be non-functional. This has been corrected.
- The UI fly-out for a warlocks' summoning spells now updates in real time based on the warlock's available mana.
- The tooltip for the armor value in the Character pane should now be showing the correct amount of armor granted to pets.
- Glyph Fixes
  - Glyph of Voidwalker's tooltip has been updated to the new pet scaling system.

Warriors

Charge now shares diminishing returns with stun effects.

Cleave damage has been reduced by 20%.

Hamstring now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Heroic Strike damage has been reduced by 20%.

Inner Rage has been redesigned. It now reduces the cooldown on Heroic Strike and Cleave by 50% (to 1.5 second) for the next 15 seconds. 1-minute cooldown. It still cannot be used during Deadly Calm. This ability was originally designed to help warriors with rage capping, but the Heroic Strike and rage normalization changes seem to have solved that problem on their own. This new design will still allow warriors to burn off excess rage faster, at their discretion.

Recklessness now increases special critical strike chance by 50%, down from 100%, but lasts the full 12 seconds instead of allowing only 3 charges.

Slam weapon damage percent (at level 80+) has been increased from 125% to 145%.

Talent Specializations
- Arms
  - Drums of War no longer lowers the rage cost of Piercing Howl.
  - Juggernaut no longer increases the cooldown on Charge, but instead increases the duration of the Charge stun by 2 seconds. In addition, Charge is usable in all stances, however, the talent now causes Charge and Intercept to share a cooldown.
  - Lambs to the Slaughter: Instead of granting 10/20/30% damage to the next Mortal Strike, Overpower, or Execute, it now grants a 10% buff to any Mortal Strike, Overpower, Slam, or Execute that stacks 1/2/3 times.
  - Mortal Strike cost has been reduced by 5 rage.
  - War Academy no longer buffs Heroic Strike or Cleave. It now buffs Mortal Strike, Raging Blow, Devastate, Victory Rush and Slam.
- Fury
  - In addition to its current effects, Bloodsurge now also causes the next Slam to deal 20% more damage.
  - Bloodthirst damage has been increased by approximately 30%.
  - Raging Blow weapon damage percent (at level 80+) has been increased from 110% to 120%.
  - Single-Minded Fury bonus has been increased to 20%, up from 15%.
  - Unshackled Fury (Mastery) now grants 5.6% benefit per mastery point, up from 4.7%.
- Protection
  - Charge's stun continues to not trigger diminishing returns for Protection warriors who have the Warbringer talent.

Glyphs
- Glyph of Rapid Charge has been changed from a 7% reduction to Charge's cooldown, to 1 second off of the cooldown. This change is primarily to clarify the exact cooldown reduction this glyph provides.

Warrior Bug Fixes
- Warrior abilities which were incorrectly assigned the sound effect for Mangle have been updated.
- Battle Shout's buff tooltip should not show incorrect values when the recipient is higher level than the warrior.
- Heroic Leap and Thunder Clap no longer incorrectly scale damage with both Strength and Agility.
- Forceful Deflection passive aura is now properly applying to warriors beginning at level 1.
- The Victorious buff can no longer proc before the warrior learns Victory Rush.
- The wording in the tooltip for Vigilance was inconsistent with other abilities and has been updated.

Dungeons & Raids

Level-85 players can now choose any normal dungeon via the Dungeon Finder. Choosing Random Dungeon will still not add Blackrock Caverns or Throne of the Tides into the rotation.

Level-85 dungeon bosses in Lost City of the Tol'vir, Grim Batol, and Halls of Origination now drop 30 Justice Points each when killed.

The daily Random Dungeon reward on normal difficulty has been increased to 140 Justice Points, up from 70.

Players no longer need to discover Cataclysm dungeon entrances in order to access them via the Dungeon Finder.

The Bastion of Twilight
- Ascendant Council
  - The Elementium Monstrosity can be attacked from farther away than was previously the case.
  - The damage dealt by Liquid Ice has been increased significantly.
  - The damage dealt by Electric Instability on normal difficulty has been reduced slightly.
  - Immunity effects will no longer cancel Gravity Crush.
  - Gravity Crush no longer hits additional targets on Heroic difficulty.
  - Frozen Orbs now despawn at the start of phase 3 on Heroic difficulty.
- Cho'gall
  - The recast time on Depravity has been increased in 10-player mode.
- Halfus Wyrmbreaker
  - Shadow Nova is now cast less frequently in 10-player modes to account for fewer available interrupts there.
  - The captured drakes in this encounter now apply Dragon's Vengeance when they are killed instead of when they are freed. To account for this change, the health and damage of the drakes has been reduced, and the damage bonus gained from Dragon's Vengeance has been increased.
- Valiona and Theralion
  - Immunities no longer port players out of the Twilight Realm.
  - The damage dealt by Twilight Sentries on Heroic difficulty has been reduced.

Blackrock Caverns
- Beauty now spawns with only two pups in Heroic difficulty. Not to worry though, the missing pup has been adopted by a wonderful, if not insane family.

Blackwing Descent
- Atramedes will now go berserk after 10 minutes on Heroic difficulty.
- Magmaw
  - Blazing Bone Constructs on Heroic difficulty no longer drop fire periodically.
  - Blazing Bone Constructs on Heroic difficulty have had their health reduced.
  - Magmaw's health on Heroic difficulty has been reduced.
- Maloriak
  - Increased the cast time of Release Aberrations.
  - Heroic: Decreased the health of the Vile Swill by 15%.
  - Heroic: Dark Sludge can now only target players.
- Nefarian
  - The Chromatic Prototypes featured in the second phase of this encounter now wait longer before casting their first Blast Nova.
  - The Stolen Power enhancement gained in Heroic difficulties now increases all damage and healing for a set time, but each attack is increased by a smaller amount. This change will not be reflected in the tooltip until a later patch.
  - Freeing one's mind from Dominion now grants a movement speed bonus for a short time.
- Omnotron Defense System
  - There is now a 10-minute berserk timer on Heroic difficulty.
  - Golem health has been reduced on Heroic difficulty.
  - The damage dealt by Incineration Security Measure has been reduced.

Deadmines
- Foe Reaper 5000
  - Foe Reaper 5000's health has been reduced slightly. In addition, he now enrages at 40%, up from 30%.
  - When enraged, Molten Slag spawn 33% faster.
- Ripsnarl
  - The ship teleporter now activates when Ripsnarl is first engaged, rather than when he is defeated.
- Vanessa VanCleef
  - While in Helix's Nightmare during the Vanessa VanCleef encounter, Helix is now larger and a little easier to see.
  - The final rope swing while fighting Vanessa VanCleef has been removed. Players no longer need to swing off of the boat at the end of phase 3.
  - Some boat fires will now go out when Vanessa VanCleef is defeated, making it easier to get back onto the ship from the cavern entrance.
  - Vengeance of VanCleef has been redesigned. It is now a stacking buff that increases damage dealt, size, and attack speed, and stacks up to 40 times. Vanessa will begin casting this as soon as she jumps back onto the boat after detonating charges.

Grim Batol
- Faceless Corruptors now move 10% more slowly.
- Players may still use spell and abilities while afflicted by Forgemaster Throngus's Impaling Slam.
- Valiona's Devouring Flame damage has been reduced by 20%.

Halls of Origination
- The duration of the Flame Wardens' Raging Inferno has been reduced by 80%.
- Anraphet's Nemesis Strike now does 75% of weapon damage, up from 50%. In addition, the damage-over-time effect applied by this ability does 15,000 damage every 2 seconds, up from 9,000.
- Earthrager Ptah's Flame Bolt now deals more damage per second on Heroic difficulty.
- Setesh seeks a portal every 25 seconds, up from 20.

Lost City of the Tol'vir
- Lockmaw no longer tolerates fighting in his treasure room.

Shadowfang Keep
- Baron Ashbury
  - Sadly, in his hubris he has forgotten how to Mend Rotten Flesh.
- Lord Godfrey
  - He should now face a random target when casting Pistol Barrage.
- Lord Walden
  - Conjure Poisonous Mixture now deals more initial damage.
  - Frost Mixture is now area-of-effect damage.
  - Toxic Catalyst now deals less damage over time.

The Stonecore
- Stonecore Earthshapers' Dust Storm does slightly less damage.
- Corborus
  - The warning time for Thrashing Charge has been increased by 1 second. In addition, Thrashing Charge now happens 4 times, down from 5.
  - The visual for Rock Borers spawning during the submersion phase is now different from the Thrashing Charge visual.
- High Priestess Azil
  - She grew! She's now 175% the size of a human, up from 125%.
  - Gravity Wells should kill Devout Followers more quickly.
  - The cast time of Force Grip is now 1.5 seconds, up from 1.
  - The size of the warning visual for Seismic Shard has been increased to more accurately reflect the area it affects.
- Slabhide
  - The ground phase lasts longer and has fewer stalactites.
- Ozruk
  - He now does more melee damage.
  - There is now a precast visual on the ground to make it clear how far away a player must get to be clear of Shatter.
  - The cast time of Shatter has been increased to 3 seconds, up from 2.5.
  - Shatter damage is now reduced by armor, but has been increased by 33.3% (repeating, of course) as a result.

Throne of the Four Winds
- Al’ Akir
  - Al'Akir's Electrocute can no longer be interrupted by Spell Reflection.
- Conclave of Wind
  - Heroic: Slicing Gale debuff reduced from 10% per stack to 5%.
  - The duration of the Wind Blast pre-effect has been increased to 5 seconds, up from 3.

Throne of the Tides
- Commander Ulthok now does more melee damage.
- The damage done by Lady Naz'jatar's Shock Blast and Naz'jar Tempest Witch Chain Lightning has been reduced.
- Gilgoblin Poisoned Spear impact damage has been reduced slightly.
- Tainted Sentries Swell damage has been reduced.
- The damage of Blight of Ozumat has been reduced by 25% per stack.

The Vortex Pinnacle
- Creatures
  - Desperate Speed cast by Temple Adepts has had its duration reduced significantly.
- Altairus
  - The visual effects in this encounter have been adjusted to make the wind direction easier to read.
  - Cyclones now knock players straight up, and players hit by a cyclone cannot be hit again for a few seconds.
- Asaad
  - Skyfall Stars are now summoned to help him defeat players.
  - Static Cling has had its cast time increased to 1.25 seconds, up from 1.
- Grand Vizier Ertan
  - His health has been reduced slightly.
  - He now knocks away players standing too close to him when he retracts his Cyclone Shield, which now inflicts Nature damage if it touches players.

Dungeon & Raid Bug Fixes
- Many dungeon maps with display issues or missing sections have been updated.
- Several bosses and creatures were awarding no, or too little, reputation when killed. Conversely, some creatures were awarding too much reputation, or should not have been awarding reputation at all. These inconsistencies have been corrected.
- Error messages for characters unable to enter a Heroic raid dungeon should be more clear.
- Players level 83 and higher should be able to correctly queue for holiday dungeon bosses.
- Players above level 80 can no longer queue for Wrath of the Lich King Heroic dungeons.
- Level 68-79 Wrath of the Lich King dungeons again award reputation.
- If a spell is cast which provides items for players (i.e. Soulwell), members of the party or raid should still be able to access the items after the caster leaves the dungeon.
- Ahn'Qiraj
  - If one of the bug trio bosses is tamed, the encounter can again be completed normally.
- Baradin Hold
  - Players in the raid dungeon will correctly be given a 15-minute warning before Tol Barad will be in contention again.
- The Bastion of Twilight
  - There should no longer be a significant performance drop when entering the Bastion Antechamber.
  - Several items dropping in the Heroic version of Bastion of Twilight which did not have the Heroic tag in their tooltip have been updated.
  - Cho'gall should no longer look awkward when he is Distracted while sitting on the Throne of the Apocalypse.
  - The voice-over text now matches the voice-over for Cho'Gall's speeches.
  - Cho'gall shouldn't Evade and despawn if pulled too close to the door at the entrance to the Throne of the Apocalypse.
  - Cho'gall shouldn't despawn if tanked close to his door when he gains Twisted Devotion.
  - If a Fire Elemental is spawned while Cho'gall is standing on the hidden elevator, they will no longer spawn in the wrong location for the remainder of the encounter.
  - The overhead arrow spell animation caused by Valiona's Twilight Meteorite ability shouldn't clip into the affected character while animating.
  - The corpses of Valiona and Theralion will adhere to the laws of gravity and fall to the ground if killed during phase transitions.
  - The Cache of the Broodmother (from Sinestra) will no longer despawn if dungeon difficulty is changed in the interface.
  - Static Overload used in the Twilight Ascendant Council encounter no longer deals full damage to pets.
- Black Morass
  - Sa'at again has a dialog option for players to obtain a Chrono-Beacon, even if they have not completed the quest chain that begins with the quest "The Caverns of Time."
- Blackrock Caverns
  - Karsh Steelbender's targeting reticule no longer changes size when he catches fire.
  - Raz the Crazed no longer returns to his Shadow Prison if Blackrock Caverns is reset, which was preventing players from finishing the dungeon.
  - Players shouldn't experience a move enforcement error or be pushed under the world if they are standing near lava when affected by Chains of Woe during the Rom'ogg Bonecrusher encounter.
  - Twilight Obsidian Borers in Blackrock Caverns resume channeling of Bore after being under the effects of a rogue's Sap.
- Blackwing Descent
  - Ancient Dwarven Shields used while Atramedes is entering or exiting his air phase should correctly be destroyed.
  - There is no longer a dead zone void of Sonic Pulses on the Heroic version of the Atramedes encounter.
  - Arcanotron can no longer be pulled further than intended via a death knight's Death Grip.
  - Lightning Shield shouldn't trigger the shields of all Omnotron Council bosses.
  - Clicking the character name displayed in the raid warning for Lightning Conductor during the Omnotron Defense System encounter no longer brings up the tooltip for the spell Lightning Conductor.
  - Maloriak's Magma Jets correctly have a cast time.
  - The effect of Maloriak's spell Consuming Flames should no longer be inconsistent with its combat log tooltip.
  - Maloriak will no longer interrupt himself when speaking during transition phases.
  - The voice-over text now matches the voice-over for Lord Victor Nefarius' post-Maloriak kill speech.
  - Corpses of Animated Bone Warriors no longer float above the lava during phase 2 of the Nefarian's End encounter.
  - Nefarions voice-overs should always be audible when standing in the Vault of the Shadowflame.
  - Chimaeron shouldn't enter phase 2 prematurely.
  - Chimaeron thought he had 3 heads, resulting in 3 separate sleeping animations. He now knows he only has 2 heads.
- Blackwing Lair
  - The gate at the entrance of Blackwing Lair correctly opens after Chromaggus is tamed as a pet.
- Caverns of Time
  - Human Illusion: This effect is no longer applied to worgen.
- The Deadmines
  - Admiral Ripsnarl can no longer be pulled off the top of his ship without resetting the encounter on Heroic difficulty.
  - Defeating Captain Cookie should no longer despawn his cooking pot or leave his corpse floating in mid-air.
  - Foe Reaper 5000 should no longer arbitrarily reset the encounter.
  - The achievement criteria for Prototype Prodigy correctly resets after a wipe.
  - It is no longer possible to avoid detonated charges without leaving the boat during the Vanessa VanCleef encounter.
  - The buff aura applied with random internal information in the tooltip when players access the ropes during the Vanessa VanCleef encounter has been amended.
  - Fixed a bug where players would sometimes have mounting issues after engaging Helix Gearbreaker in any incarnation.
- Grim Batol
  - The Twilight Beguiler's ability Deceitful Blast no longer ignores line of sight.
  - It is no longer possible for Forgemaster Throngus to not choose a static direction to channel Flaming Shield.
- Halls of Origination
  - Spatial Anomaly now drops loot.
  - Multiple Heroic items dropping in the Halls of Origination had level requirements that were too low and have been updated.
  - Players should correctly receive the achievement Faster Than the Speed of Light if they die prior to the party meeting the criteria.
  - Setesh's Chaos Burn void zones should now be viewable by players with projected textures disabled.
  - The Setesh encounter will now fully reset properly, even if his minions are more than 300 yards from him when he resets.
  - Curse of the Runecaster debuff nowa deals damage as its tooltip states it will.
  - The Sun-Touched Spritelings and Sprites will no longer retain the Pyrogenics buffs after death.
  - Sun-Touched Servants and Sprites will no longer die without spawning creatures if they are stunned right after they cast Disperse.
  - The Celestial Familiars summoned during the Isiset encounter are no longer classified as humanoids.
- Icecrown Citadel
  - Kinetic Bombs used during the Blood Prince Council fight will no longer behave oddly if they spawn near the door at the entrance to the room.
- Lost City of the Tol'vir
  - Characters hit with General Husam's Hard Impact ability should now always slide down the pillar they are flung into.
  - Lockmaw shouldn't Evade and despawn if pulled onto the steps directly behind his starting location.
  - Several line-of-sight issues have been corrected around the Sanctum of the South Wind.
- Scarlet Monastery
  - The courtyards in the Library, Armory and Cathedral wings should no longer have portal errors.
- Sethekk Halls
  - The door leading out of Talon King Ikiss's room should always properly open.
- The Stonecore
  - Fixed a bug that made Ozruk's Shatter knockback component 10-yard range while the damage had a 15-yard range. Both are 15 yards now.
  - Earthwarden Yrsa has been reminded she's a dwarf and now speaks like one (instead of using a draenei voice).
  - Crystal Shards spawned by the Crystalspawn Giant should now immediately despawn after a wipe.
  - The particle effects used when Corborus submerges below the ground should no longer cause performance issues.
  - Players shouldn't receive a random error during the High Priestess Azil encounter.
  - High Priestess Azil shouldn't be able to Force Grip players through the altar.
  - Killing a Stonecore Earthshaper that transforms into a Force of Earth now correctly awards loot.
- Stratholme
  - Archmage Angela Dosantos's portal at the end of the dungeon should no longer suffer from functionality issues.
  - Willey Hopebreaker no longer plays extraneous "I'm dying" sound variations simultaneously when a Scarlet Cannon is fired.
- Throne of the Four Winds
  - A client assertion issue which could occur during the Al'Akir encounter has been corrected.
  - Ravenous Creepers should now all despawn if the raid wipes while they're spawning.
- Throne of the Tides
  - Players can no longer bypass the tentacle knockback area by being super sneaky with their abilities.
  - Ozumat's Blight of Ozumat can be partially resisted, but can no longer miss players.
  - Lady Naz'jar's Geyser should no longer potentially knock players outside the boss room above the geometry of the dungeon.
  - Commander Ulthok's Dark Fissure effect should now display correctly when projected textures are disabled.
  - Poisoned Spear: The impact of this damage has been reduced.
- The Vortex Pinnacle
  - Players who enter the dungeon through the instance portal are now given a means to exit after defeating Asaad.
  - Cyclone used by Wild Vortex should no longer be removing some aura abilities.
  - Minister of Air's Lightning Lash is now properly cast even if a player is not in line of sight.
  - Skyfall Star now leashes and no longer keep players in combat throughout the dungeon if engaged and not killed.

Guilds

The guild reward Armadillo Pup now requires revered faction instead of exalted.

All guild banners now reward bonus reputation in addition to honor and experience.

Guild bank vouchers that players unlock as guild rewards now correctly state that they can only be used by Guild Leaders.

Once a guild hits level 23, the daily cap on experience gained is removed.

Additional animations have been added to the Armadillo Pet guild reward.

The guild faction requirement on the Guild Herald has been lowered to Revered reputation.

We have redefined the definition of a Guild Group for 5-player dungeons.
- If 3 out of 5 players in a group are members of the same guild, they will now be able to complete guild achievements and earn guild experience at 50% of the normal rate.
- If 4 out of 5 players in a group are members of the same guild, they will now be able to complete guild achievements and earn guild experience at 100% of the normal rate.
- If 5 out of 5 players in a group are members of the same guild, they will now be able to complete guild achievements and earn guild experience at 125% of the normal rate.
- Also note that Heroic dungeons offer a 1.5x multiplier on all guild experience earned.

Items

Bell of Enraging Resonance can now trigger from any damage spell instead of only critical strikes.

Daybreaker Helm stats have been reallocated, lowering Strength and increasing parry rating.

The Fury of Angerforge internal cooldown has been drastically reduced so this trinket will build up charges much faster.

The Honor Commodities and Justice Commodities Vendors now sell raw tradeskill materials. These are not intended to be a cost-effective source of these materials, but an option for players with lots of Justice or Honor Points who have already purchased all of the gear that interests them.

The cooldown on the Horde Battle Standard has been adjusted to 10 minutes to be consistent with the Alliance version.

Left Eye of Rajh: Chance of triggering increased.

Lich King trinkets with bonus armor values have been adjusted using the new Cataclysm formula, reducing their armor values substantially.

Mandala of Stirring Patterns now grants Intellect instead of Mastery.

Item Sets
- Normal PvE helms (item level 359) no longer have a chance to drop from Nefarian or Cho'gall on Heroic difficulty. Instead, the Heroic PvE helm and shoulder pieces (item level 372) only require their associated Crown/Shoulders of the Forlorn tokens to purchase, and do not require players to obtain the normal helms or shoulders first.
- The PvE hunter 4-piece set bonus has been redesigned. It now reduces the cast time of Steady Shot and Cobra Shot by .2 seconds.
- The PvE warlock 4-piece set bonus (Fel Spark) now increases the damage done by the next 2 Fel Flame spells by 300%, rather than increasing the critical effect chance of one by 100%.
- All PvP 4-piece bonuses have had their flat stat values cut in half. Primary stats are very powerful in Cataclysm, so much so that players were considering using PvP gear in PvE just because of these primary stat bonuses.
- The PvP Balance druid 4-piece set bonus effect has been increased to 20 Solar Energy and 13 Lunar Energy, up from 5 and 13. The effect will also now be more intelligent at choosing whether to give the druid Lunar or Solar Energy (it checks the Balance Power to determine which to give depending on which energy is higher at the time).
- The PvP priest 4-piece set bonus has been redesigned. When Power Word: Shield is cast on the priest, movement speed reduction effects are temporally suppressed for 4 seconds.
- The PvP warlock 4-piece set bonus has been redesigned. It now reduces the cooldown of Death Coil by 30 seconds.
- The PvP warrior 4-piece set bonus has been redesigned. It now reduces disarm duration by 60% (does not stack with any Weapon Chains).

PvP enchants are properly valued and attached to Honor Quartermasters and Tol Barad/Baradin Hold Quartermasters.

PvP trinkets will now clear disarm and silence effects.

Right Eye of Rajh: Chance of triggering increased.

Weapon Chains now reduce disarm duration by 60%, up from 50%.

Item Bug Fixes
- Several items obtained during the 1-60 leveling experience had incorrect level requirements (particularly dungeon items) and have been corrected. This includes multiple plate armor pieces which had level requirements below level 40.
- Many items with inconsistent stats (including Intellect on hunter items) or stat values have been updated. This includes items which were lacking a vendor sell price.
- Many items or item set bonuses which referenced stats or abilities that no longer exist have been updated.
- Several item procs and set bonuses were not functioning as stated and have been corrected.
- Some Cataclysm trinket procs or activation graphics shared effects with common player spells and have been updated.
- Items specific to Dragonmaw Clan and Wildhammer Clan reputation now translate properly after a Paid Faction Change.
- The new high-level reputation tabards are no longer using the Ramhaken tabard art.
- The Disgusting Oozeling no longer applies a debuff which reduces defense, a deprecated stat.
- Shirts no longer add to the average item level used to determine eligibility for Heroic dungeons.
- The Golden King mount will now properly translate to the Annihilator mount if a player initiates a Paid Faction Change.
- Clicking the Reforge button multiple times before the reforge is complete should not cause players to be charged for each click.
- Dungeon & Raid Item Fixes
  - Several dungeon items have been updated so that the appropriate classes can roll Need.
  - The Crossfire Carbine (The Bastion of Twilight) no longer incorrectly has the Heroic tag.
  - Normal and Heroic versions of Willowy Crown (Blackrock Caverns) have updated icon, texture, and model art.
  - Using Corrupted Egg Shell (Grim Batol) on a player who is eating or drinking shouldn't interrupt them. In addition, the Egg shell buff will now be removed when the Corrupted Egg Shell trinket is unequipped after being used on a party member.
  - The Forge Ember (Halls of Stone) can no longer proc from non-healing/damaging spells.
  - The socket colors for the normal and Heroic versions of Blood-Soaked Saronite Stompers (Icecrown Citadel) were inconsistent and have been updated.
  - Oggleflint's Inspirer (Ragefire Chasm) now binds when picked up.
- Profession & Enhancement Item Fixes
  - Arcanum of Burning Mysteries is now consistent with its healing counterpart, Arcanum of Blissful Mending.
  - Enchant Cloak - Dodge can no longer be cast on capes below the character level 35 requirement.
  - Enchant 2H Weapon - Mighty Agility required Runed Elementium Rod, which is learned at a higher skill level. This has been addressed.
  - Flask of Oil is now obtainable to craft Goblin Jumper Cables and Gnomish Universal Remote from using Engineering to mine Harvest Reapers.
  - Frost Oil should now correctly proc as intended.
  - Guardian Stones correctly drop from Stone Guardians.
  - Goblin engineers can now learn the schematic for the Mechano-Hog.
  - Worgen engineers can now learn the schematic for the Mekgineer's Chopper.
  - The Mighty Alchemist's Stone and Indestructible Alchemist's Stone are properly able to be reforged.
  - Mixology now correctly provides the duration increase to Elixir of Camouflage.
  - The Origami Rock, Origami Slime, and Scroll of Protection IX can correctly be placed into inscription bags.
  - Parachute Cloak can no longer be used when the character is already on the ground.
  - Runescroll of Fortitude II was applying Fortitude, which only provides 165 Stamina instead of the 468 Stamina listed in the tooltip. This is fixed.
  - Scroll of Intellect VI is now available to train from Inscription trainers.
  - Spider's Silk was too difficult to obtain and should now drop more frequently.
- PvP Item Fixes
  - Horde and Alliance Battle Standards now have consistent cooldowns.
  - Firelord's Draught can only be used in Battlegrounds, as advertised, and no longer incorrectly increases spell power instead of Intellect if that is the highest stat.
  - Cataclysm Gladiator relic tooltips no longer states they can be used by priests.
  - Merciless Gladiator's Spellblade had inconsistent damage with the rest of the set and has been updated.
  - Vicious Gladiator's fist weapons should not be using placeholder art.
- Item Display Fixes
  - Enchant and weapon trail animations and effects should now be properly displaying on many items which were not correctly displaying them previously.
  - Many item and armor display issues which affected select races have been corrected.
- Tooltip Fixes
  - Many tooltips have been updated to reflect any changes made via recent hotfixes.
  - Several flying mount tooltips have been updated so they no longer say these mounts can be summoned in Outland and Northrend only.
  - Several typos found in various item tooltips have been corrected.

Professions

Find Herbs, Fish, and Minerals are no longer canceled upon entering an Arena or rated Battleground.

A socket has been added to most crafted epic armor pieces that did not already have one.

Alchemy
- Alchemist's Stones for Agility, Strength, and Intellect have been added.
- The number of herbs required to create flasks has been reduced, while the Volatile Life needed has been increased slightly.
- The drops from Tiny Treasure Chests have been improved slightly.

Archaeology
- Archaeology fragments now have a hard cap of 200 per race. Players will not be able to collect additional fragments until they complete artifacts to take them down below 200 fragments. Players with more than 200 fragments will not lose additional fragments in 4.0.6, but in a future patch we may remove any fragments above 200.
- Archaeology finds now grant a guaranteed skill point up to 50 skill, and then no longer grant skill gains, as opposed to granting up to 100 skill very slowly.
- The sell value of all common artifacts has been doubled, while a small subset of common artifacts have had their sell value increased far beyond that.

Cooking
- Multiple spawn locations now exist for the Confectioner's Sugar (daily quest item) in Stormwind.

Enchanting
- Three new bracer enchants are available. They increase Agility by 50, Strength by 50, or Intellect by 50 respectively. Item level 300 or higher required. These new recipes are rare world drops.
- Enchant Off-Handed - Superior Intellect now increases Intellect by 40, down from 100.

Engineering
- The Electrified Ether recipe now creates 2 to 3 Electrified Ether instead of 1.
- The Heat-Treated Spinning Lure buff duration has been increased to 15 minutes, up from 5. In addition, the recipe now creates 2 at a time.
- Mystic Cogwheel is a new Engineering Cogwheel gem which provides resilience rating and can be purchased from the Engineering vendor for 55 Honor Points.
- Synapse Springs now increase Agility, Strength, or Intellect (whichever is highest for the character). In addition, the effect now lasts 10 seconds, down from 12.
- Volatile Air now has an increased chance of dropping from rich mining nodes and Pyrite with the Electrostatic Condenser.

Fishing
- Rare fishing poles now have a chance to be found in the Bag of Fishing Treasures earned via the Stormwind and Orgrimmar Fishing daily quests.

Inscription
- Ink Traders have been added to Orgrimmar and Stormwind.

Jewelcrafting
- Meta gems with the Chaotic and Relentless prefixes now have a requirement of 3 red gems.
- New meta gems have been added: Agile Shadowspirit Diamond (Agility/3% critical damage), Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond (Strength/3% critical damage), and Burning Shadowspirit Diamond (Intellect/3% critical damage). These new recipes are unbound and can drop from any Cataclysm creature. The new meta gems have a requirement of 3 red gems equipped.
- Vivid Dream Emerald (new gem) provides resilience/spell penetration and can be purchased for 3 Illustrious Tokens.
- Wrath of the Lich King purple, green, and orange gems have been increased in cost to match red, blue, and yellow epic gems (220 Justice Points). Burning Crusade epic gems have been increased in cost to match the most expensive Wrath of the Lich King gems.

Leatherworking
- The 500 to 510 skill-up range for Leatherworking has been improved.

Tailoring
- Darkglow Embroidery (Rank 2) now increases Spirit instead of restoring a flat amount of mana.
- Illusionary Bag now has 26 slots.

Profession Bug Fixes
- See the fixes listed under the Items section.

PvP

Arenas
- Bloodlust, Heroism, Time Warp and Ancient Hysteria can no longer be cast while in Arenas.

Battlegrounds
- The Battle for Gilneas
  - The time it takes to capture a flag has been reduced to 5 seconds, down from 8.
- Strand of the Ancients
  - The damage done by Antipersonnel Cannons has been doubled.
  - The missile speed of Rocket Blast (Antipersonnel Cannons) has been increased by roughly 50%.
  - Some Antipersonnel Cannons could shoot the platform they were spawned on. These spawn locations have been fixed.
  - The Battleground Demolisher no longer has two additional seats and now only has room for the driver.
  - A PvP duration flag has been added to Battleground Demolishers. This should make it so crowd control effects cast on unmanned demolishers does not last an extended amount of time.
  - There should no longer be a discrepancy in time when the Battleground Demolishers spawn at the start of each round.
  - The Battleground Demolishers spawned on the docks no longer despawn when the north graveyard is taken by the offense.
  - Massive Seaforium Charges should now be useable in rated Battleground matches.
  - The duration of the Teleport debuff has been lowered to 10 seconds, down from 20.
  - The radius of the Seaforium Blast has been lowered to 10 yards, down from 20.
  - The Teleporters on defense will now teleport players based on which line of gates have been destroyed, rather than directly behind that gate. For example, if a player clicks the Teleporter at the Blue gate when one of the beach gates has been destroyed, it will put the player behind the Red gate.

Tol Barad
- Attacking forces will receive a 200% capture speed bonus when they control 2 keeps.
- Defending forces will receive a 200% capture speed bonus when they control all 3 keeps.
- Daily quest creatures, herbs, minerals, etc. will only spawn when Tol Barad is in the quest phase between battles. There will be 5-minute and 1-minute warnings before the quest phase ends. The quest phase ends 15 minutes before the battle for Tol Barad begins and queuing is made available. At that time any players in the daily micro dungeons will be ported just outside. This does not apply to Tol Barad Peninsula or the daily quests there.
- The weekly PvP quest "Victory in Tol Barad" now awards 200 Honor Points and 3 Tol Barad Commendations.
- Players can now see the status of Tol Barad on the World Map no matter where they are. The time to the next battle is displayed by zooming into the Tol Barad section of the map. The current controlling faction can be seen on the Eastern Kingdoms map.

PvP Bug Fixes
- Players are again able to report other players as AFK from the maps and chat interfaces in Tol Barad and Wintergrasp.
- Arena Fixes
  - Entering an Arena should no longer sometimes cause a client crash.
  - It is now possible to disband an Arena team from the Arena Team management page of the PvP tab.
  - The Join Battle button on the PvP pane should now function when a team captain attempts to queue.
  - It should no longer be possible for players to get their pets stuck on the large pillars in the Orgrimmar Arena.
  - Players joining late to an Arena match will now count for the win condition and will have enemy unit frames.
- Battleground Fixes
  - Players should no longer receive a client crash by going AFK in a Battleground.
  - There should no longer be a slight delay when returning a flag in Battlegrounds.
  - The Battleground Rating and Rating Change categories on the Score Screen are now sorting properly.
  - Arathi Basin
    - The buff located at the Blacksmith should now always apply when players run through it.
    - The Goldmine flag no longer counts as two base assaults when captured by the Horde.
  - Eye of the Storm
    - Players with only the classic World of Warcraft license attached to their accounts should now be able to access this Battleground.
  - Isle of Conquest
    - The Horde gates no longer become large pink cubes when they are destroyed.
    - The Alliance Keep entrance should not start open at the beginning of the battle.
    - Vehicle damage now better matches the tooltip.
    - Using a catapult's Launch should no longer cause players to sometimes get stuck inside the geometry of the Horde Keep.
  - Strand of the Ancients
    - It should no longer be possible for the Alliance boats to not phase out upon the start of round 2.
    - Move enforcement failures shouldn't occur while on the ships for either faction.
  - Twin Peaks
    - Boots of Speed power-ups were unevenly placed relative to the flags in each base and have been adjusted.
    - The interface should now properly track the final flag capture for the Horde.
- Tol Barad Fixes
  - The status and timer on the map should now be working correctly.
  - The Abandoned Siege Engines now make sounds when moving.

Quests & Creatures

Many rare creatures that went into hiding upon Deathwing's emergence into Azeroth have made a return! In addition to finding new homes in a post-Cataclysm world, they drop new, improved loot, provide a healthy experience bonus, and respawn much more quickly when killed. Happy hunting!

Stranglethorn Vale
- Chief Engineer Scooty, formally of Booty Bay, has packed up his Gnomeregan teleporter and lugged it up to Grom'gol in Northern Stranglethorn to better accommodate his Horde customers.

Tol Barad Peninsula
- A new achievement, Just Another Day in Tol Barad, has been added for completing all of the Tol Barad daily quests.
- Crazed Guards now drop Rusty Rifles.
- The spawn rate of Alliance and Horde Infantry for the quest "The Leftovers" has been increased.
- The Magnetized Scrap Collector for the quest "Magnets, How Do They Work?" will now be correctly removed from players' bags upon completing the quest.
- Both the Baradin's Wardens and Hellscream's Reach Commendations are now Bound to Account items.
- Quest turn-in NPCs have been added to Baradin Base Camp and Hellscream's Reach in Tol Barad Peninsula for the Tol Barad bonus quests. This will allow players to turn in these quests if the original quest givers in Tol Barad are not available.
- Kill credit for the Tol Barad bonus quest bosses will now be granted to players who have helped attack them, even if they are not in the same group. These bosses include Problim, Archmage Galus, Warden Silva, and Svarnos.
- The Farson Keep Prisoner summoned for the quest "Walk A Mile In Their Shoes" will now only be visible to the player who summoned him.
- Spawn rates at Rustberg Village have been increased.
- Rusty Rifles will now spawn more frequently at Farson Keep.

Quest & Creature Bug Fixes
- The minimum level requirements for many level 1-60 dungeon quests were too high and have been appropriately adjusted.
- Goblin Zeppelin Masters who are marked as Horde faction will no longer cause Alliance players to lose neutral goblin reputation if killed.
- Corehounds in Mount Hyjal cannot be tamed by hunters without the required Beast Mastery talent.
- Darkwood Lurkers and Broodmothers in Tol Barad Peninsula can now be skinned.
- Players should now always receive 6 daily quests in Tol Barad Peninsula as intended, rather than sometimes only getting 5.

Races

The draenei racial trait Gift of the Naaru now heals 20% of the target's health over 15 seconds, rather than a scaling value.

The dwarven racial trait Stoneform now reduces all damage taken by 10%, rather than increasing armor by 10%. It also increases the dwarf's size when used.

The gnomish racial trait Escape Artist now has a 1.5-minute cooldown, down from 1.75. In addition, it is now possible to use and waste this ability when not snared or rooted. This is consistent with other dispels.

The human racial trait Every Man for Himself has been reverted back to a 2-minute cooldown, down from 3 minutes.

The night elf racial trait Shadowmeld can now be used while shapeshifted.

The tauren racial trait War Stomp can now be used while shapeshifted.

The worgen racial trait Darkflight now has a 2-minute cooldown, down from 3, and is no longer on the global cooldown. In addition, the movement speed bonus now stacks with existing bonuses, but cannot be activated while Sprint or Dash is active (and they cannot be activated while Darkflight is active).

Race Bug Fixes
- Goblin Rocket Barrage damage is no longer inconsistent with its tooltip.
- Goblin characters can now participate in the Argent Tournament via the Orgrimmar delegation.
- The tooltip for the orc racial Blood Fury now shows the correct amount of attack/spell power boosts.
- Attempting to use the worgen ability Two Forms while under the effects of a druid's Shapeshift should no longer cause an incorrect error message.
- Worgen characters can now participate in the Argent Tournament via the Darnassus delegation.

User Interface

For opening cinematics there is now a streaming option interface in the login screen for play-on-demand.

Players can now individually remove raid world markers.

The Reputation Pane now saves which reputation categories are expanded or collapsed.

Character Info Window
- The Character Info window (C) now saves the order and expand/collapse state of stat categories separately for each talent specialization.
- Character movement speed is now displayed on the Character Info window (C) with all other stats.
- The Haste display on the Character Info window (C) now shows the total haste percentage, rather than only haste from haste rating.

Archaeology
- There are now number displays on the summary page and dropdown menu.
- Ready Flash has been added to the race icons.

Guild Interface
- A View All button has been added to the profession display regardless of whether Show Offline Members is checked.
- Online members can now be sorted to the top of the View Crafters list.
- The guild reputation cap is now displayed in the tooltip.

Real ID & Chat
- Real ID login notifications now include character and game icons.
- Players can now right-click close a chat window tab even if it's not the current tab.
- There is now an option to auto-pop whispers into a new tab.
- Popped out whisper windows now show online/offline status messages.

Unit Frames
- Predicted healing (previously only available for Raid Frames and raid-style Party Frames) has been added to the following unit frames: Player Frame, Party Frame, Target Frame, and Focus Frame.

User Interface Bug Fixes
- Many tooltips have been updated to reflect any changes made via recent hotfixes.
- Several typos found in various item and spell tooltips have been corrected.
- The Combat Log was displaying a lot of incorrect or inconsistent information pertaining to select player, creature, and boss abilities. These issues have been addressed.
- Many quests with missing or incorrect Wanted portraits have been updated.
- Several quests missing objective points of interest on the map have been updated for proper tracking.
- Cooldown countdowns on tooltips should now update properly when mousing over an ability on cooldown on a secondary action bar.
- Worgen characters now work properly in the Barbershop.

General Bug Fixes

Many holiday decorations have been updated to better align with the post-Cataclysm world. In addition, decorations should be visible in all Stormwind quest phases, and have returned to Gadgetzan. Party on, dudes!

Lunar Festival Sentinels anti-PvP guards have had their level and health/damage modifiers adjusted for Cataclysm.

Corpses now properly drop to the ground if a player is killed in midair.

Dying while using a Charge ability will no longer leave the player's corpse suspended in the air.

Spells with attachment point effect visuals should now display correctly.

Many spell effects which were no longer displaying properly have been corrected.

Players' pets should now properly benefit from Mana Spring Totem.

Players will now receive an error when attempting to spend talent points while dead or a ghost.

Sound Fixes
- Sound shouldn't become de-synced during encounters with large amounts of sound effects.
- Sound shouldn't cut out when there are a large amount of sound effects being played at once.
- There should no longer be delays on some sounds in select situations.

Blood Sport: Become a 5v5 master (tips and tricks)

2010-08-31T08:30:00.000-07:00

Default to damage

Oh, Wrath of the Lich King, how we had such great hopes. Damage is almost always the most successful strategy. Defaulting to damage is something I have to explain often, especially when I start playing with new teammates who are trying to push for their first gladiator title.

Players who have high technical skill (for instance, being able to Spell Reflect an escaping druid's Nature's Grasp) often try to win games by doing things more "skilled" than the enemy. They'll preach for seemingly endless hours about how often they Counterspelled their opponent's Incinerates, yet they still lost the match. Sometimes, the opportunity cost it takes to interrupt one of your spells to interrupt an opponent is better spent by doing damage, especially if an enemy is low on health. Why bother Counterspelling an enemy damage spell when you can get a kill? [EDIT: I removed confusing language concerning interrupts and global cooldowns.]

These same players look down on opposing compositions for being "faceroll" or "noob comp" because they win games by just pumping damage into the enemy. There's a reason why "bad players" can get to high ratings by using certain compositions -- damage is the premier strategy.

The danger of cool things

I'm not going to sit here and type out how awesome I am because I've never fallen into the "cool things are cool" trap. I'll freely admit that I still struggle with doing damage rather than cool stuff -- especially on my warlock.

When we were going for No. 1 in 5v5 a few seasons ago, I was doing almost everything except slinging fire at enemies. I would have every enemy DPS locked down with Curse of Tongues or Curse of Weakness -- except for our kill target, of course. I would CoT, Fear, Spell Lock, Shadowfury and Death Coil opposing healers until they were blue in the face.

What I should have been doing, however, was just casting a simple Curse of the Elements > Immolate > Chaos Bolt > Searing Pain > Conflagrate rotation into our kill target every chance I got. My teammates mentioned how little damage I was doing against high-rated teams (teams where I thought complex strategies were more effective), compared to the enormous amount of damage I was putting out against low-rated teams. I made the transition and we fared much, much better against the Top Ten teams on our battlegroup.

Pay less attention to addons

Many people think great arena players need to be paying attention to many, many things at once. Some people think great arena players need to always know when trinkets are available, or they somehow keep track of each enemy cooldown.

That's not the case. At all.

Top arena players understand what's going on in the game at the largest level possible. Understanding the big picture slows down the game and allows you to think inside other player's roles. It gives you insight as to when you should burn a cooldown or when you should beware an enemy is about to use a cooldown on you.

I don't use Afflicted 3 or any similar mods to track enemy cooldowns -- they waste precious screen space, and you generally shouldn't need mods like this if you take the time to understand the big picture. Plus, using mods like Afflicted desensitizes you to the natural ons and offs of cooldowns.

When a paladin casts Divine Shield, I can generally tell (within +/- 0.5 seconds) when his bubble is coming down, even though I have no way to tell exactly when it's going to dissipate (or be Mass Dispelled). On my shaman and priest, (Purge, Dispel Magic) I have enemy buffs (on my target and focus) enabled. On everyone else, I don't even bother and turn buffs off. I don't need to see if someone has a Sacred Shield or Mark of the Wild on them; it will make no difference to what I'm doing.

This isn't because I'm magical. I don't have some telepathic superpower. I don't have a sixth sense. What I do have, however, is enough arena experience to understand the game at large and look at the bare nubbins of important arena functions. It sounds more complex than it is ... (More on this next week.)

Figuring out and adapting to your teammates' playstyles

You get better at figuring out and adapting to your teammates' playstyles the more you play with different individuals. Everyone who has tried arena has met that guy on trade who wanted to play a few games -- and it just sucked. He was doing everything you didn't expect, and he was expecting you to do everything you didn't. Your playstyles were completely different, and you failed game after game.

Likewise, if you've been playing long enough, you've probably met a player or two who has meshed exceptionally well with you. Perhaps you're not rank 1 quality yet, but you've done better with them than you ever expected previously. You probably had similar ideas about how arenas should go, and your victories reaffirmed that.

I've played with holy paladins who cast Hammer of Justice once every 10 arena games. Other holy paladins use it on cooldown. Some druids love Cycloning enemy healers; some don't do it at all. Some Cyclone enemy DPS when they're at 10 percent health so they don't get receive heals. Then they charge up Starfire to help aid in killing blows with the DPS at 10 percent. Everyone has a different playstyle.

Having a different playstyle isn't wrong. Restoration druids usually find they fare better either with melee or spellcasters because of their playstyle -- offensive Cyclones on healers are much more important to a spell-burst team than they are to a team that focuses on melee; that's just the way arena works.

How to play the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game

2010-08-29T09:04:00.000-07:00

Do you know how to play the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game? If not, then you are one of many online gamers I've heard of who help make the trading card game a hot property but have not discovered that those cards you are packing up and burying in your apartment or house are actually a lot of fun to play with. For those of you who haven't taken a look at the trading card game at all, I'd highly recommend it.

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed.
I have been playing card games since 2003, and the WoW TCG is no exception. I spent over a year writing about the game, as well as playing and working at some of its biggest events (with a short break in 2008 to finish school). It was because of WoW TCG that I ended up getting into the WoW MMO in the first place!

The WoW Trading Card Game has been around since fall 2006 and has continued on through a transition from one company (Upper Deck Entertainment) to another (Cryptozoic). Organized play has had its ups and downs, but the game is starting to get more popular and attendance is once again picking up at events everywhere. However, a recent addition to the weekly tournament at my local comic book store mentioned that he knows plenty of people who buy the cards but never learn how to play.

Why is that?

Learning the basics

Learning the WoW TCG is not difficult. It takes some time, but figuring out what the cards do, especially if you have played the online game, can be simple. People who have played trading card games in the past, especially Magic: The Gathering, will pick up the game quickly.

The basic gameplay for the WoW TCG is as follows: You take on the role of a hero card. This hero comes from a specific faction, Alliance or Horde, and is one of the 10 classes in the game. Your hero also dictates what you can and can't have in your deck of 60 cards. If your hero is an Alliance mage, then you can't have Horde allies or or shaman abilities in your deck. Your deck contains the various abilities that your hero can use, many of which are based on actual class abilities in the online game. Your deck can also contain equipment, which lets your hero gear up to attack and defend, as well as allies, which are characters based on the classes and factions from the online game that support your hero and can attack or defend your hero and other allies. In a standard game, you will pit your hero against the opponent and their hero. The player who takes out the opposing hero first is the winner!

Knowing the basics of the game is one thing, but getting hands-on experience in the rules of the game is another thing entirely. Cryptozoic Entertainment, the company that currently works on the WoW TCG, released the class starter decks in early July, featuring decks (one for the Alliance and one for the Horde) of the nine original classes from the online game. These new decks are great learning tools and come with the instructions you will need to learn the basics, plus some hard-to-get rares from the first sets of the game.

One of the best trading card game engines

But why should you play? Aside from the fact that the game is fun and one of the best trading card game engines to be released since Magic: The Gathering, in my opinion, playing the WoW TCG at major conventions such as BlizzCon and PAX can be a very rewarding experience. There are always a lot of public events that players can participate in, with the prizes commonly being rare loot cards.

My favorite events at these conventions are the loot card or Ipod drafts, where players participate in a booster draft with the latest expansions; the winner of these 8-man tournaments gets the big prize! Last year, at an event in Las Vegas, they were giving away Spectral Kitten loot, but often, an Ipod Nano will be the big prize for these short and quick tournaments.

Loot cards can be given out at some events to random participants, so you don't have to be one of the best to get a shot at loot such as the Spectral Tiger or the Blazing Hippogryph! In fact, the fine folks at Cryptozoic will give away loot cards like they are nothing at their big events. Don't believe me? Just ask Rosalei Castaneda about this. At Gen Con, one of the biggest gaming conventions in the United States and home to the 2010 WoW TCG World Championship, she didn't win any big tournaments but still walked away with a fistful of awesome loot cards! You can read about what she won and how she won them by checking out Cryptozoic's coverage of the World Championships.

Not only is the WoW TCG fun, but it can be one of the cheapest ways for you to get some of the hottest vanity items in the online game. It's a nice break from the MMO world, giving you a chance to hang out with friends outside of the Ventrilo server. I hope to see you some day at one of the big events!

Shadow Priests: The four best things about Cataclysm

2010-08-29T09:01:00.000-07:00

In between the fevered dreams, cough syrup benders and The Golden Girls marathons associated with my most recent cold this week, I resolved to pen the greatest Spiritual Guidance article of all time. After all, Hemingway's genius came from the bottom of a bottle. Perhaps then it would stand to reason that the true genius of Fox Van Allen would come from the bottom of a bottle of CVS Nighttime Cold and Flu.

Alas, that was not to be the case. In my hastily written Twitter screed, "The best things about Cata for spriets (sic)," I praised Blizzard for the way it made quests smell in Hyjal. The third best thing about Cataclysm was, "wait hold on no no no wait." Cold medication is serious business, kids. That's why they keep the good stuff behind the counter.

Thankfully, the cold has finally lifted (mostly). Thinking with a more sober mind, I've come to the realization that the idea of a "favorite things" list is a decent one (sup, Oprah?); it's just that my execution was a bit off earlier in the week. After the break: My real picks for the "best" changes to shadow priests (so far) in Cataclysm and a chance for you to chime in on your favorites as well.

Inner Will

While it's not technically a shadow priest talent, Inner Will is something that every shadow priest should be excited about. Not necessarily for situations where you're in battle, but for every single moment you spend outside of it.

A huge chunk of our time in World of Warcraft is spent meandering around the big cities -- buying reagents, traveling between the auction house and the mailbox, picking up trade goods and hunting down Wild Mustard. The idea that less of my time will be wasted doing the least fun thing known to man in game -- traveling -- is a blessing worthy of inclusion here.

Shadowy Apparition

Let's be honest: No list of favorite shadow priest changes in Cataclysm would be complete without a hat tip to Shadowy Apparition (also known as ghostly aspects of our shadowy hatepower). It's absolutely overloaded with "cool factor."

There are a few minor issues holding me back from proclaiming this to be the best thing about Cataclysm, at least for now. Shadowy Apparition seems to be something of a technical nightmare for Blizzard to implement. Each new beta build comes with a fix or change to the ability, but it still remains pretty bugged. The apparitions tend to chase down the wrong target, and they still hit for the wrong amount of damage (at least, I think they still do -- it's awfully hard to tell with the damage numbers turned off). That's forgivable, though. The concept behind Shadowy Apparition is sound, even if it isn't correctly implemented yet.

A few weeks ago, the talent underwent a pretty major artisitic change. The old "floating skull" Shadowy Apparition is gone; instead, the ability now procs clones of yourself (as Blizzard had originally intended). It looked a bit glitchy the first time I saw it in action on the battlefield, but when I played around with training dummies, the animation seemed to go much more smoothly. I can't help but wish my ghostly aspects of shadowy hatepower were in Shadowform, but that's a minor concern.

The more pressing concern is the tax these extra shadow priests could have on your graphics card. I play on a fairly modern desktop, but I have plenty of friends who play on more dated machines and laptops. If you're the type of player who prefers 10-man raiding to 25-man raiding simply because the former gives you better frame rates and performance, then Shadowy Apparition could severely bog down your computer on a movement-heavy fight, even if you're only running a 5-man instance. Seriously, the proc rate on these things is just that generous. We could fill a whole raid with these things.

There's still plenty of work for Blizzard to do with the talent, but what I've seen so far in the beta is promising.

Paralysis

Seriously. I'm excited about Paralysis.

When I play World of Warcraft, I try my best to be a team player. And really, when you're taking on 5-man, 10-man or 25-man content as a shadow priest, that's supposed to be your primary focus -- working as part of a team. DPS players tend to fade into the crowd as the least important aspect of any raid encounter, so anything I can do to add some more value to the team, I do. When I play my elemental shaman, I use Wind Shear every chance I get. On my shadow priest, putting two points into Improved Vampiric Embrace was an easy call.

That talent is going extinct in Cataclysm, and I've been keeping an eye out for a new talent or ability that might take its place. For a time, I figured that ability could be one we already have, Silence. But we're pretty deep into beta already, and developers are still keeping it gated behind a two-point investment in Improved Psychic Scream.

I won't give up hope that we'll someday be able to use Silence in PvE as well as PvP, but just this month, Cataclysm gifted shadow priests with an ability that I'm quite intrigued by: Paralysis. The downsides are obvious -- it's a stun snare that puts you at the total mercy of the random number generator. It's not really an interrupt, like that beautiful Silence talent Blizzard insists on us never being able to take. And of course, we have no idea how effective this will be on non-player characters -- Blizzard has a habit of making bosses totally immune to stuff like this.

But here's the upside: It's a new concept and a new ability that doesn't require me to give up a mapped keyboard key to use. As I play Cataclysm more and more, I'm starting to get button fatigue by the sheer number of choices I have. Between Mind Spike, Dark Archangel and a rekindled interest in Shadow Word: Death, managing the new abilities along with the old standards seems clunkier than ever. I can see Paralysis bringing a nice benefit to my time soloing and to my 5-man groups, and the idea that I don't even need to waste a global cooldown to use it just feels like icing on an already sweetened cake.

An understanding of how shadow priests work

Back in Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader, hybrid classes were poor, abused step children. Elemental shaman had to deal with gear loaded with useless MP5. Shadow priests had gear loaded with sub-optimal spirit. Why was that?

Um ... well, you see, cause resto needs MP5, you know, and ... uh ... and holy, holy and disc are two ... uh ... spirit ... um ...

OK, so I'm not really sure what Blizzard was thinking back in ye olden days of World of Warcraft 3.2. But you can't take a look at the way shadow priests are being designed for Cataclysm without getting a sense that shadow priests -- and in fact, most hybrids -- are finally getting an appropriate level of commonsense design. Shadow priests are the kings of the damage over time spell. It only makes sense that haste should be a powerful stat for us, right?

When Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague became haste-affected spells in Patch 3.3.0, the wall started to crumble. In 4.0, Shadow Word: Pain gets affected by haste, too. The piece that I truly appreciate, though, is the continuity of thought in the design process. Blizzard gave us something to benefit from haste, while simultaneously reworking our talent tree to highlight the stat. If you'll recall, a few weeks ago, Shadowform was changed from a 5 percent crit buff to a 5 percent haste buff. And just this past week, we saw the developers retool Darkness. What was once a static increase to shadow damage is now a 1/2/3 percent increase to spell haste.

That may not seem like a big deal to the casual observer, but this kind of coherent thinking was largely absent from the design of shadow priests throughout Wrath. It's refreshingly welcome to see it turn up in Cataclysm.

No one cares what you think, Fox

That's what my mom used to tell me, anyway. Good ol' mom.

Seriously, though, now that you know what I think about what's coming for shadow priests in Cataclysm, I'd like to hear everyone else's impressions on the beta so far. What's your favorite part about shadow priesting 4.0? Are you loving Dark Archangel? Do those silly little shadow orbs excite you way more than they excite me? Maybe you're just so darn excited about tauren priests that you can't think about anything else.

Now's your chance to sound off. As for me, I'm going to go finish off that bottle of cough medicine and watch some TV until next Wednesday. I hear Match Game's on.

WOW Cataclysm still on track for a 2010 release date

2010-08-07T08:35:00.000-07:00

Around this time last year, we reported that Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion was targeted for a 2010 release. It's been a while since we've heard anything related to a release date, though, so we thought perhaps the date had slipped a bit.

Not so, apparently! In the latest Activision-Blizzard investor conference call, the companies reported their earnings for Q2 of this year and also spoke a bit about why, all things considered, 2010 will be a good year for Activision-Blizzard. Blizzard reported excellent earnings, as always, and noted that despite economic turbulence, World of Warcraft has maintained 11.5 million subscribers. The biggest news, though, was that Cataclysm is still on track for a 2010 release. During Mike Morhaime's address to investors, he said:

"... I'd like to point to the release of Cataclysm, being our best expansion yet for World of Warcraft. Although an exact release date has not yet been announced, we're on track to launch the expansion by the end of the year. As with all Blizzard games, though, we won't release until it's ready."

Good news for us the fans. It's getting harder and harder to wait, even (or especially) with the beta being available. We'll keep you guys posted if we hear anything more specific regarding a release date.

Raid Rx: Is that DPS gear or healing gear?

2010-08-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

Got an email this week from a reader. We'll call him G. I'm sure it's a question that many raid leaders or loot masters had to struggle with over the years.

[...] When cloth item A drops, our caster DPS and healers always /roll on it; the caster DPS doesn't seem to mind if it's MP5 or spirit. Let's take an example of the Cord of the Patronizing Practitioner. Our warlock says spirit is good for him and he /rolls; our priest says it's healer gear [because] of the spirit [as] regeneration for him; and our mage of course wants this also.

The healer complains the caster DPS gets to roll not only on items like this but also on cloth stuff with +hit, effectually rolling on everything cloth in ICC. I can kinda see what he means. My question is what's an easy way to differentiate "healer" gear from caster "DPS" gear, or is it all rolled into one big pot now?

Thanks for any help you can give me, I am not the guild leader but I am the full time loot master, the guild leader has given it to me to decide, as he's never played any caster at all.

Well, G, I don't have a lot of DPS toons myself, but I'll do my best to explain it. The loot system I use is loot council for my raiding guild, and this is a situation we deal with in an ongoing basis as loot drops from bosses.

Paladin loot is self-explanatory.

MP5 is generally a healing stat.

Crit and haste are beneficial for both roles.

As always, whom you ultimately decide to hand loot over to is going to depend on a number of factors such as:

attendance

performance

gear needs

level of content

seniority in guild or raid group

spec

And there are probably more things to consider than that. If we omit the above factors, though, there are a few guidelines we can use if we base our decisions purely on stats. So here we go!

If you're deciding gear on the fly, then use the following purely as a rule of thumb.

Hit If it has hit rating, it's generally used for DPS players. They need that hit rating to hit mobs. Contrary to whatever you may hear in trade chat, you don't need hit gear to heal people. If a healer says to you he needs the hit in order to heal, get yourself a new healer right now.

Spirit Usually, the healers will want to claim priority on it first. But I believe mages and warlocks have abilities that convert spirit into a desirable stat, such as Molten Armor and Fel Armor.

MP5 If you see this on gear, option it to your healers first. I can see situations where extremely undergeared DPS would want it since it could possibly be an upgrade no matter what.

Crit It's universal for both roles. It's not necessarily wrong for a healer to take a crack at it. It's an item that will benefit either.

Haste Like crit, haste is also beneficial. Having more haste means you can do stuff way faster, the more haste rating you have. Who doesn't want to do things faster? DPS players want haste so they can fire off more spells. Healers want more haste so they unload heals more quickly.

WOW: Gear for paladins

This is fairly straightforward. Protection- and retribution-specced paladins want nothing to do with spell power. Holy paladins can't seem to get enough of it. Your gear will have varying amounts of MP5, haste and crit depending on the level of content you're doing. Since you don't have any competition, feel free to go nuts.

For stuff like trinkets and weapons, if mana isn't a problem for you, then you'll typically want to lean toward something with haste and crit over MP5. A perfect example would be Belt of the Lonely Noble.

Don't let me catch you going after spirit weapons (until Cataclysm, at least).

Gear for shaman

Unlike paladins, there are two shaman specs that both utilize spellpower. Elemental and restoration shamans want spellpower, but the wishes of the preferred secondary specs are going to vary. Follow the same outline as above. At higher levels when mana isn't an issue, it's not uncommon for a resto shaman to want mail gear with haste and crit rating. If you're the loot master, keep in mind that both will benefit from an item like a Split Shape Belt. There's no hit rating on it, so it doesn't scream "DPS," but there is a ton of haste and crit.

An item like the Mail of Crimson Coins is going to garner more interest from a resto shaman than anyone else.

WOW: Gear for druids

While spirit isn't entirely useless for balance druids, you may wish to pass it off to a resto druid first in case they need extra regeneration. While I admit I'm not as well versed with healing druids as I should be, from what I understand, they value haste more than crit. Get that global cooldown all the way down, right?

WoW: Gear for priests

Last but not least, this is the trickiest, as there is an abundance of cloth-wearing classes. There always seems to be some type of feud going on, especially when it comes to gear drops. Follow the same rules as outlined above.

Let's use the item that was mentioned in the original question. A belt like the Cord of the Patronizing Practitioner will benefit a mage, a warlock or a priest. It does have spirit on it, and normally that would go straight to a healer. But don't forget that those DPS classes have talents which convert spirit into an offensive friendly stat.

Hope that helps with the gear resolution!

Wow Cataclysm Beta: Holy power questions

2010-07-28T04:30:00.000-07:00

Holy power is the big conversation topic for paladins right now (well, that and mobility in PvP -- but that's always a topic of conversation for paladins). For those of you who have been out of the loop, Blizzard announced during its last developer chat that for the betterment of the class, paladins would be receiving a new resource called holy power. This would be used in conjunction with mana for a variety of new and existing abilities.

So after having played with holy power on the beta realms, we decided to ask our Twitter followers if they had any questions or concerns about this new system for us to look into.

Soranomaru asks:

"How fast does it accrue? How do you spend it effectively? Is it a mechanic to empower spellcasts or another ressource like mana?"

Short answers: Currently, every 3 seconds for ret, 4 seconds for prot, and 6 seconds for holy due to the abilities and talents they'd be using to earn it. Usually, three points is the most efficient. It's a secondary resource, like runic power is to runes on a death knight, and there are certain abilities that use it and other abilities that have nothing to do with it.

Long answers: Holy power is a secondary resource that you'll have along with your current mana bar. As retribution and protection, you'll be using Crusader Strike to build up your holy power points (HPP). If you're holy, you'll still have access to Crusader Strike, but you will also be using Holy Shock to build up that HPP. The most HPP you can build up at a time is three, so you'll be earning and spending fairly quickly. Some abilities give a flat rate based on how much holy power you put into it (Word of Glory), while others get much more efficient with the more points used (Templar's Verdict).

Fuubaar18 asks:

"do you think holy power was built for rets and spilt over into holy & prot or does it feel like it was meant for all 3?"

Blizzard has actually said that the devs originally came up with this concept for retribution and liked it so much that they decided to build it into both holy and protection. Holy seems to be adjusting to this new system quite well, as one of the original spells designed to use this was a heal. The spec that seems to have had the most trouble adjusting thus far is protection, but with the latest beta build, it appears they've worked some of that out. It's still rough overall, but the developers are slowly starting to get some polish on it.

Velidra asks:

"If holy power are going to be persudo combo points, are blizzard worried that the concept might work for dps, but not healers?"

It looks like Blizzard was concerned that such things might happen, so the developers have built several ways for holy power to be helpful specifically for healers, both baseline and into the new holy tree. First off, Holy Shock will be your primary holy power generator (HPG), so that you aren't reliant on Crusader Strike like protection and retribution. There is also a talent called Tower of Radiance in the current build that gives you holy power whenever you cast a direct heal on your Beacon of Light target. Between the two of those, you should be able to build up holy power without too much effort.

That holy power can be used with the new Word of Glory ability that heals for a scaling amount depending on how much HPP you had stored up. This is an instant, no-mana, no-cooldown direct heal. So, if you're in the middle of a running fight (and you've picked the talents for this to work), you can hit Holy Shock on your Beacon target, which will earn you a combined two HPP, and use that on Word of Glory for another heal while Holy Shock is on cooldown.

CrimsonTemplar asks

"what kind of healing is that free heal (from Holy Power) going to do? Little heal (less that current FoL)?"

From the look of things on the beta, without talents a fully charged (three HPP), Word of Glory will do more healing than Holy Shock but less than Flash of Light. The numbers may change slightly or dramatically between now and release, though.

holyret asks

"Doesn't it feel like Holy (WoG) and Prot (HS) get very little use out of Holy Power compared to Ret (TV/DS/Inq)?"

I'd have to agree that there isn't any real choice for holy at the moment. Prot does have the option of using Word of Glory as an emergency self-heal instead of using Holy Shield. They can also both use Inquisition, but unless you're over-gearing the content or soloing, the 30% holy damage increase for our healadin brethren won't be that useful. I'd like to see another option for either just holy or something baseline for both prot and holy to take advantage of.

Alliancesjr requests

"Make it more flashy than just a buff. A holy version of Shadow Orbs/Lightning Shield/Water Shield/etc., maybe."

It's really a combo-point-type system that we're going to build up and burn through fairly quickly. However, a visual cue for when you earn some holy power might be helpful, much like watching for any type of proc. If they don't add it, you could always do something cool with Power Auras. I know that I will.

Ghodamus asks

"Only the obvious question; how will this effect my bubble-hearth?"

Heh, your bubble hearth should be unaffected by holy power itself ... for now. However, Divine Shield will have a shorter duration than the casting time for a hearthstone. The developers have joked that they may create a Glyph of Divine Shield that decreases your hearth stone cast time to sync up with the Divine Shield duration. For the moment, it's nothing more than a quick quip from the dev chat.

Enter to win a Blazing Hippogryph and other loot

2010-07-28T04:27:00.000-07:00

Yes, you read that title correctly! Courtesy of the ever-generous WoWTCGLoot.com, WoW.com will be giving away an assortment of prizes for the next week, including a Blazing Hippogryph. The full assortment of prizes includes:

One Blazing Hippogryph

Two Instant Statue Pedestals

Three Landro's Gift Boxes

The contest begins immediately and ends Monday, Aug. 2 at 11:59 p.m ET. On Aug. 3, winners will be announced right here on WoW.com. To enter, simply leave a comment on this post. You may enter once per day each day of the contest. That means if you enter every single day of the contest, you will have seven chances to win. Winners will be chosen at random.

Good luck to all who enter!

Blizzard 2010 Global Writing Contest announced

2010-06-26T20:46:00.000-07:00

Do you like writing? Well, if you do, and you like the various properties of Blizzard Entertainment (I'm going to have to assume that you do, what with this being a site dedicated to one of them and all), then good news, everybody! I've discovered a contest that will let you write about anything in Azeroth ... or various other worlds as well.

Yes, it's the return of the Global Writing Contest. What are the rules, you ask? Well, I'm glad you did.

Blizzard Entertainment Global Writing Contest

Do you dare test our judges' optic mettle, laying your ideas and dreams beneath their unblinking gaze? If so, submit a 2,500- to 7,500-word short story written in English and set in the Warcraft, StarCraft, or Diablo universe by July 30, 2010, and earn your chance to visit the Blizzard headquarters and meet the writers and staff behind the lore of Blizzard's games and books.

There's a FAQ with various clarifications and a button to enter at the official site for the contest. Prizes include a chance to go have lunch with the Blizzard writing staff, a Frostmourne of your very own, a Diablo III barbarian diorama, and much, much more, so get on over there and check it out and then start writing.

Wow Warriors Guide: To 40 and beyond

2010-06-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

So we resume our discussion of leveling from two weeks ago. Since that time I've worked another warrior to 80 as well as chugged along on my orc and leveled a new tauren warrior to 41. One of the great things about playing a warrior is, we don't have to write a lot about how awesome we are or how we do things better than other classes because we're cool with who we are. And when we're not cool with who we are, we slam shields or axes into things until we are.

For starters, the big three warrior cooldowns (Recklessness, Retaliation and Shield Wall) are no longer linked and now only take 3 minutes to becomes usable, making them much more active and promoting their use over making the cautious warrior hold onto them for emergencies. While you won't have Recklessness in the 21 - 40 range, you will gain both Shield Wall and Retaliation in these levels, and you won't be forced to pick between them.

Also, you'll get a mount at level 20. Cherish it. When I first leveled a warrior I had to run everywhere until level 40, and at 40 you got the 60% speed mount. Now at level 40 you get an epic! You kids today are spoiled.

Looking over the non talented abilities available between 21 - 40, not much at all has changes between those BC days and now. For talents, since Shield Slam is just a trainable skill, the level 40 warrior will have Bloodthirst, Mortal Strike and Vigilance within reach. However, two years of class design and innovations like LFD mean that my conclusion from 2007 that prot spec was the worst leveling spec is entirely altered. Prot is an excellent leveling spec now, much stronger than it was. You can use prot to quest and grind (especially when you can pull many mobs at once) and, thanks to LFD, prot is also excellent for running dungeons over and over again for extra rewards and lots of XP. (My orc now has a prot offspec which she uses when I want to get a lot of XP fast.)

I deliberately chose to level the tauren as arms on a server where I have no other characters to funnel honor or heirlooms just to see how hard it is. Answer: it's not hard. The LFD tool and early epic mount is an absolute godsend. Even in leveling/quest greens you can get into at least one or two instances a day fairly easily. Even without the XP boost from heirlooms, leveling is much easier when you're more mobile and able to get around to quest hubs faster than ever and get some instances to supplement your questing.

Between 21 and 40 the dungeons you'll be running scale from Razorfen Kraul and Blackfathom Deeps/SFK upwards to cover the wings of Scarlet Monastery, and by 41 you'll have wings of Maraudon as well as Zul'Ferrak available to you as well as Uldaman. Frankly, I let the LFD tool do the work of choosing an instance for me, but if I had to pick one of these to run the most it would be Scarlet Monastery. You still only get plate at level 40, and there's a lot of solid mail pieces, some weapons for the aspiring arms or even fury warrior, and a heck of a shield for any leveling prot warrior. Between 30 and 40 SM is an absolutely happening dungeon complex all told.

The Berserker Stance questline is at level 30. It can be easy to miss, so make sure to check with your trainers and get it done to ensure you have access to all your abilities. It will also open up the Cyclonian questline. I can't recommend doing the Cyclonian questline enough, even if you do end up having to rip a lot of troll teeth out in STV. Hey, you have a mount now! There's no excuse not to do it.

You also get more options if you choose to level through PvP as well. Arathi Basin opens up to you at these levels, meaning you can still grind honor through BG's and the rewards from either the Defilers (for Horde) or League of Arathor (Alliance) become available. If you have the honor, you could easily get boots, a belt and more as soon as you hit level 28 and can upgrade every 10 levels. Since these rewards are itemized without resilience on them, they're suitable for both PvE and PvP content.

Basically, what the three years between trips through these levels have done is to improve everything in large and small ways. If you're leveling a warrior alt and can afford items like Heirlooms and Wintergrasp Commendations, you can very easily keep a toon geared up, but even without access to those conveniences it is not hard at all to move a warrior through these 20 levels of content in any spec you choose. Improvements in mobility, in talent selection, the addition of the LFD feature and the ability to queue up for PvP from anywhere in the world give you a wide variety of options for how you're going to level your warrior. Where talents and abilities have changed (and the only really big change is that all warriors get shield slam regardless of spec at level 40) they've only streamlined the experience.

In a week or two, we'll go from Azeroth to Outland and look at how that's improved.

WoW Grim Batol preview released

2010-06-19T18:04:00.000-07:00

Blizzard updated the official community site this evening to supply us with a preview of one of the upcoming 5-man dungeons in Cataclysm. This time around it is Grim Batol, a dwarven-made fortress with a long and twisted past.

Called to action by the red dragonflight in the Twilight Highlands, players will be charged with putting a decisive end to the foul machinations developing within the level-85, 5-player dungeon of Grim Batol. The ferocity of the enemies within should not be underestimated, and with the assistance of brave Red Drakes and a handful of explosives, players can thin the ranks of Grim Batol's occupiers through bombing flights into the ruined city's corridors. Regardless of how successful these attacks might be, General Umbris will not allow his army to fall so quickly. In the end, adventurers will be left to their own devices, venturing into the darkest recesses of the dwarven fortress, where a nightmarish enemy is taking shape. Will you be able to uncover Grim Batol's secrets and emerge unscathed, or will your destiny be sealed within this tortured city, like so many brave heroes before you?

For the full zone preview, head over to the official World of Warcraft community site.

Basic PvP tips and tricks for Death Knights

2010-06-09T08:38:00.000-07:00

With Wrath more or less winding down and only the Ruby Sanctum before us at some nebulous point in the future, a lot of us are wandering around with full PvE gear and currency tabs full of emblems looking for a place to go. One easy place to let off some of that steam is with PvP. Be it arena, battlegrounds or (admittedly pretty rare these days) world PvP, this article will give you some basic tips to get yourself squared away with the gear and spec you need to start off on the right foot.

This is by no means a complete guide to absolutely every aspect of death knight PvP. This'll help you get your feet wet and get properly geared, but there's always more to learn, especially in the dynamic, ever-changing world of PvP combat strategy and tactics. Still, nothing gives you a better start on the road to skill than a good foundation in stats and speccing, so let's start this up.

Spec and talent advice

If you're serious about PvP these days, you're probably going to be speccing unholy, specifically something close to this 0/17/54 build. Unholy's very useful because it not only gives you extra resistance to magic damage, but also allows you to stack massive, armor-ignoring magic damage between Scourge Strike, diseases and Death Coil, as well as giving you an extra form of crowd control and healer harassment via the Ghoul. What's nearly as important, though, is how you spend points in the frost tree.

In the frost tree, you'll want to grab Runic Power Mastery so you can churn out three Death Coils when you're bursting down your target. Toughness will boost you to tier 2, and give you some resistance again snaring effects. In tier 2, grabbing Icy Reach will let you apply Chains of Ice from further away, and Black Ice makes your Death Coil hit that much harder. Of course, you'll get what you really came here for in the next two tiers: Lichborne gives you another get-out-of-trouble-free card and a way to self-heal with Death Coil, and Endless Winter makes your Mind Freeze free to use and gives you some extra strength for bursting down enemies.

Stats to get

In deciding which stats to get, resilience and stamina are of course, of supreme importance. That said, you'll get most of the stamina and resilience you really need from the PvP armor sets. if you're kitting yourself out with PvP gear, you'll get most of what you need. Besides staying alive, you also need to actually do damage, which means you need to focus on a few other stats:

Hit rating 5% hit rating will let you hit people with your two-handed weapon and your weapon strikes. Let Virulence take care of the rest as far as spell hit goes, but you want that hit rating. Missing a key Scourge Strike or Strangulate could spell the difference between that priest dying or getting a heal off.

Spell penetration You'll want to have approximately 130 spell penetration. Spell penetration gets your spell-like effects past any innate or buff-granted resistances on your targets. You'll be glad you have it when your Strangulate hits and stops that shaman from winding up another Chain Heal. Spell Penetration is also a lot easier to grab than you might imagine. Four Stormy Majestic Zircons will get you a cool 100 spell penetration, and you can use Spell Piercing on your cloak to get to 135 spell penetration.

Strength and critical strike rating You'll want these as well. While a death knight's role in a PvP team is almost always primarily utility, you'll still be bringing a lot of DPS pain, so you'll want to buff your damage output as much as possible. Generally, strength is better than critical strike rating, but get a decent balance if you can. Your burst damage will thank you if you keep a decent critical strike rating. If you're not killing people fast enough, it may be time to start enchanting and gemming for strength after spell penetration and hit, or to use PvE DPS pieces on your rings, neck and cloak slots. However, don't overdo it on PvE pieces. You'll still probably at least want your main armor slots to be PvP gear.

Playstyle and general tips

Essentially, a death knight's role in group PvP will almost always be utility. We can dish out a decent amount of pain, but often it's best to leave the specifics to other DPS while we crowd control, interrupt and otherwise harass the opposition, especially casters and healers. Essentially, you are going to want to be read to deploy Death Grip, Strangulate, Mind Freeze, Chains of Ice and your ghoul's Gnaw ability at any time. Once you have that all ready to use, you'll want to use it -- but not all at once. Consider each button precious.

Learn to time skill use for when it's most advantageous. For example, use Death Grip and Chains of Ice to wrangle in a mage or warlock after they've used Blink or Demonic Circle. That way, they can't just teleport away. Use your Ghoul's Gnaw to break up a stunlock by using it just as your enemy's stun is about to wear off, giving yourself time to get away from them or put up your own defenses before they can recover (and in the case of rogues, use another stun). Death Grip is also great as an emergency interrupt.

Likewise, don't forget to use Icebound Fortitude, Lichborne and Anti-Magic Shell. Learn what status effects each one cancels or avoids and be ready to use them to outlast and survive. For example, Lichborne will turn you undead, thus make you immune to most forms of traditional crowd control, and Anti-Magic Shell not only absorbs magic damage but poisons too, and it'll leave you immune to negative effects such as traps and roots as well. Plus, the shell gives you plenty of runic power, so when it's time to burst your target down, you have three Death Coils ready to go.

Another important tool to remember for a PvP death knight is Empower Rune Weapon. This can give you emergency runes for a Chains of Ice or Strangulate or another such spell, or it can be used while burst to provide you with another couple Scourge Strikes if your first burst doesn't finish off your target. Keep this button handy for sure.

You'll also want to learn Ghoul control. Don't keep your abilities on autocast. You'll want to be able to cast Leap, Gnaw or Huddle at a moment's notice. You'll especially want to get good at using Huddle and Leap to help your Ghoul outlast or escape if it gets focused for killing. Remember, your Ghoul can use Leap to leap to an ally as well, which can be great for support or escape purposes.

As far as which presence to use, all three have their place. Frost Presence is useful when you're getting focus-fired, and many arena death knights like to keep it on at the beginning of a battle until they're sure they aren't going to be focused to start off. Blood Presence is still a good heavy hitter, but many death knights will stay in Unholy Presence in order to squeeze out more quick burst damage thanks to the shorter global cooldown and for the run speed increase.

As you fight more and more, you should start getting a better feel for what works and what doesn't, so keep it at it. I'd especially recommend checking out our Blood Sport and Art of War(craft) columns for all the latest PvP tips and tricks. Especially check out Art of War(craft)'s series on countering each class, even death knights themselves. If you know what tricks the enemy's expecting from you, it's easier to figure out your own ways to counter.

Wow priest's guide to tanks

2010-05-25T07:43:00.000-07:00

I love tanks. Likewise, there have been many tanks who have loved me.There is nothing more beautiful than the love between a tank and a healer. It's actually a little known fact that every great love song ever written was written about a tank and healer. Every little thing she does is magic? Totally sung by a tank. Don't leave me this way: sung by a healer. Still don't believe me? Check out Heroes by David Bowie; it was actually originally written as a tank x healer duet. Just look at the lyrics:

"And you, you can be mean,And I, I'll drink all the time."See? So, if you want to find your great tank love, if you want a tank that knows how and when to blow each and every one of his cooldowns to maximize every lasting second of your epic encounters together, then you are going to have to rise up and meet him. You need to be the healer his healer could heal like (if she stopped playing hybrid-spec player classes.) Luckily, you're already a priest, the most alluring of healing classes, but don't think that's enough. You need to be more than just some healer who heals him -- you need to understand him. That is today's goal.The information in this article is meant to give you a better understanding of how each tanking class works. It won't teach you how to tank, but it will briefly explain tank cooldowns and what you can expect as a healer. While the information should be helpful to all priests, it will probably be more useful for 5-man or 10-man content, where priests of either spec (yes, I'm talking to you, holy priests!) are more likely to be wearing different hats at different points in an encounter.Warriors Just as priests used to be thought of as "the one true healer," warriors were once similarly known for being "the one true tank." (The warrior ability Shield Wall has even been adopted by other tank classes as a way to describe their own, damage mitigating cooldown ability.) Times have changed quite a lot since vanilla, but warriors are still strong, well-rounded tanks.Basics: A warrior is a "block class," meaning he can use a shield to mitigate a lot of incoming melee damage. (Warriors can also dodge and parry, so don't make the mistake of thinking all they do is block.) You can expect incoming damage on him to be consistent in size and speed. If the damage is or becomes irregular, focus your heals on him and be ready to use a cooldown on him if his health drops below 30%. A warrior should be able to handle the damage of multiple mobs due to his shield, but like all classes, if he is being hit from behind you should pay close attention to his health.Threat: Warrior threat requires a lot of maintenance to upkeep. If you find yourself running with a less seasoned warrior, be ready to use Fade; especially in pulls with multiple mobs.Priest concerns: If you read the official priest forums, there is not a week that goes by without someone asking if priest shields, like Power Word: Shield, negatively affect warrior rage generation. The answer is no. A priest's shields allow warriors to generate rage just as they always do. This has been the case since patch 3.1.Primary cooldowns:

Last Stand -- Every 3 minutes (2 minutes if glyphed) a warrior can increase his health by 30% for 20 seconds.

Shield Wall -- Every 5 minutes the tank can reduce all incoming damage by 60% for 12 seconds (4 minutes if talented; 2 minutes at 40% reduction if glyphed in addition to talents.) Additional information for overachievers: A warrior can also use Shield Block every minute (40 seconds if talented) for 10 seconds. Shield Block will increase a warrior's chance to block by 100% and double his block value. If you don't understand what that means, just know that this is a shorter but smaller cooldown for warriors to use. Warriors can also heal themselves for 30% of their health (40% if glyphed) with Enraged Regenration ever 3 minutes.PaladinsProtection paladins are a dime a dozen in numbers, but like all classes, the diamonds are harder to find. A good paladin tank is versatile and excels at AoE tanking.Basics: Paladins are similar to warriors in that they use a shield (plus dodge and parry) to mitigate damage. Also like warriors, damage taken is consistent and usually predictable once you're comfortable with a fight's mechanics. If the consistency of the incoming damage changes, have a cooldown ready while you focus your heals. A paladin can comfortably handle the damage from tanking multiple mobs at once; but again, problems will arise if he ever takes damage from behind so watch his positioning.Threat: Paladins should have no trouble generating threat.Priest concerns: On very rare occasions, usually in a 5-man dungeon, you might run into a prot paladin with mana problems, who tries to blame it on Power Word: Shield. The justification for this is that paladin tanks gain additional mana from Spiritual Attunement, which converts effective healing they receive into mana (overhealing doesn't count.) The talent returns 10% of the effective healing as mana (12% if glyphed), but it's more "icing on the cake" than a bulk of his mana regeneration. He still has Divine Plea and Guarded by the Light, and in most situations (any raid) he is always going to be taking enough damage to warrant healing him anyway. Should you ever run into this situation though, just be polite and stop shielding him.Primary cooldowns:

Ardent Defender -- This passive talent will reduce all incoming damage by 20% whenever the paladin tank is below 35% health. Also, should the paladin ever be struck with a killing blow he will immediately be healed for up to 30% of his health instead of dying. The heal effect has a 2 minute cooldown. (A note to holy priests: If the paladin has Guardian Spirit on him, it will be consumed before the heal effect of Ardent Defender procs.)

Divine Protection -- This is a paladin's Shield Wall. It mitigates all incoming damage by 50% for 12 seconds on a 3 minute cooldown. Additional information for overachievers: I mentioned earlier that paladins are comfortable handling multiple mobs at once. This is because of Holy Shield, which increases a paladins chance to block by 30%. It has 8 charges and an 8 second cooldown; the low cooldown means that a paladin is rarely without the extra 30% chance to block.A paladin may occasionally choose to use Lay on Hands on himself instead of Divine Protection. If he does this he will not be able to use Divine Protection until the 2 minute Forbearance debuff he acquires fades.DruidsAlmost the opposite of paladin tanks, feral druid tanks are unusually rare, especially in random heroic dungeons. I suspect this has to do with the many negative misconceptions that accompany druids. Do not buy into what the skeptics have to say though; druids are extremely capable tanks (even with the dodge debuff in Icecrown Citadel) and offer great raid utility when paired with a skilled priest.Basics: A druid deals with incoming damage by sporting extremely large health pools, dodging incoming attacks, and thwarting damage with defensive abilities like Survival of the Fittest and Savage Defense. The damage that druid tanks take will be much larger than that of warriors or paladins, but it is manageable because their large health pools act as a sponge. Druids will have more trouble handling the damage from multiple mobs, since Savage Defense will only go up as quickly as the tank hits its targets with critical attacks.Threat: Druids should have no trouble generating threat.Priest concerns: Just as it is with warriors, feral druids will have no problems generating rage through a Power Word: Shield. However, due to the large health pools of druids, it can sometimes (let me stress: sometimes) be difficult to keep up with the damage on him. Discipline can respond quickly to the damage, but her lower HPS makes getting the tank to full a difficult task. Holy has the raw power to heal druids up with to full, but might have trouble responding to any incoming burst since she lacks an instant cast "nuke" healing spell. Please take in mind this is not the fault or shortcoming of the druid tank, simply some challenges that priests specifically have to deal with. Generally though, healing a druid tank isn't rough and incoming damage is steady.Primary cooldowns:

Barkskin -- This is the feral druid's Shield Wall. It reduces incoming damage by 20% for 12 seconds, on a 1 minute cooldown. The short cooldown allows druid tanks to use this cooldown quite liberally.

Survival Instincts -- This is the druid's Last Stand, increasing the tank's health by 30% (45% if glyphed) for 20 seconds on a 3 minute cooldown.

Frenzied Regeneration -- Heals the druid for a percentage of his maximum health over 10 seconds, once every 3 minutes. Additional information for overachievers: Druids will occasionally heal themselves a small amount from Improved leader of the Pack.In order for a druid tank to cast Rebirth or Innervate while tanking, a priest cooldown (Guardian Spirit or Pain Suppression) plus Barkskin is typically required. Using voice chat, instruct your tank to call for your cooldown when he is ready to shift out of bear form. When he makes the call and you've cast it on him, immediately confirm that it's up so he can quickly change forms and do his business. This maneuver is not difficult but does require solid communication and coordination to avoid a dead tank.Death KnightsDeath knights are the kindred spirits of discipline priests. Early in Wrath of the Lich King, when gear was bad and players were still learning their class, death knights developed a stigma for being squishy tanks. At the time, death knights took "spiky" damage, meaning they would take large amounts of damage at seemingly random intervals. This was terrifying to many healers, who were not yet accustomed to the yo-yo effect that would become the signature trait of WotLK on player health pools.Fortunately, at the same time death knights appeared, so did discipline specced raiding priests; and they came conveniently equipped with all the right tools to heal the pioneer tanks. Soon a loving and symbiotic relationship formed, and to this day death knights are still my favorite tanks to heal.Basics: Despite initial troubles adapting, death knight tanks don't really take damage that is much more spiky than other tanks. Like with druid tanks, the damage received will be larger than what you see on warriors and paladins, but it will still come at a consistent pace and quantity. It's especially important to communicate your cooldowns with death knights since they have more of their own cooldowns to use.Threat: A death knight tank has no AoE taunt, but should not have trouble holding threat on mobs once he has their attention. In fights with add spawns, be ready to use Fade in order to help out the tank. Additionally, death knight tanks are excellent at tanking caster mobs with his Strangulate and Death Grip abilities.Priest concerns: There is nothing special to keep in mind when healing death knight tanks.Primary cooldowns:

Icebound Fortitude -- This is the death knight's Shield Wall, reducing all incoming damage by 41% (when defense capped) for 12 seconds (18 seconds if talented) every 2 minutes.
Anti-magic Shell -- This ability has a 5 second (7 second if glyphed) duration which will mitigate 75% of all incoming spell damage, up to 50% of the tank's health.

Death Pact -- The death knight can instantly restore 40% of their hit points, every 2 minutes, by sacrificing one of his undead minions. (Note that Raise Dead has a 3 minute cooldown, and Army of the Dead has a 10 minute cooldown. Those numbers can be reduced with talents.)
Army of the Dead -- When the death knight summons his Army of the Dead, they will temporarily distract the engaged mob or mobs. The tank will also gain additional mitigation based on his dodge and parry stats. Additional information for overachievers: Technically, all death knight specs can tank, but the majority are presently tanking in the blood spec. An additional cooldown for blood specced death knight tanks is Vampiric Blood + Rune Tap -- Since Rune Tap heals based on a percentage of health, using it just after Vampiric Blood (which increases your total health) will maximize the amount healed. (With Improved Rune Tap, you can double the amount healed and lower the cooldown by 30 seconds.) If you don't know how to identify a death knight tank, look at his buffs for an above average health pool and Frost Presence.

Basics of tank healing for priests

I've mentioned tank healing several times before but as a recap:

#Keep Inspiration up on the tank, even if you're not assigned to the tank. The only exception to this is if you have a more pressing raid role (such as bubble spamming on the Lich King.)

#Apply Prayer of Mending to your tank everytime it is off cooldown.

#Keep Power Word: Shield and Renew up on your tank as much as a possible.

#Try to hold your big, instant cast heals for larger amounts of damage a tank takes. Fill in the gaps with smaller cast heals when damage is manageable.

#Communication is key to coordinating cooldown usage. While some fights will have a predetermined point at which to use your cooldowns, there will be others where you just have to go with your gut. In those cases, a quick dialogue between you and your tank will maximize the spread of your various cooldowns.

#When a tank cooldown drops off, be ready to heal your tank harder just in case he is still taking large sums of damage.

So that covers the basics. I would encourage every priest to at least committing the cooldown sections of each tank class to memory. Even if it doesn't actively help you heal, it will improve your understanding of boss fights by understanding the tanking side of things. Ultimately, understanding the tanks will help you keep your party alive through them.And don't forget what I told you about those love songs. This one was written by a tank.

Remote auction house beta test expanded

2010-05-22T21:01:00.000-07:00

Blizzard's community managers have just announced that the beta testing phase of the Remote Auction House is no longer exclusive to the Whirlwind battlegroup and has been expanded to all US realms. This includes both the mobile app for the iPhone as well as the web-based auction house found on the Armory.

For a preview of this app's features, both the mobile and web versions, check out the galleries below.

http://www.wow.com/2010/05/21/remote-auction-house-beta-test-expanded/

Blizzard confirmed for BlizzCon 2010

2010-05-22T20:53:00.000-07:00

Blizzard recently confirmed via a post on their official site that Jay Mohr will be hosting BlizzCon 2010 in Anaheim, California October 22nd and 23rd (we originally reported this via Jay's quickly deleted tweet back in February).

Tickets go on sale for the event on June 2nd and June 5th for about as long as it takes to punt a gnome across the road. But if you don't get tickets, you can still catch Jay (and all the other glories that are BlizzCon) via the live internet stream.

In my opinion, Jay has been doing a better job at BlizzCon each year he's hosted.

Blizzard Entertainment

Comedian and actor Jay Mohr will be returning to BlizzCon this year to serve as master of ceremonies for the live costume contest and other contests on the first night of the show. Jay is the star of the popular television show Gary Unmarried, and is known for his roles in movies like Jerry Maguire and for creating, producing, and hosting the successful TV series Last Comic Standing. We'll have more info to share about the Friday-night contests and other events at BlizzCon in the months leading up to the show, so keep your eye on BlizzCon.com for more details.

Update: On Twitter, Mohr currently says he's not sure he's doing BlizzCon this year.

A roundup of WoW Classes changes

2010-05-18T08:48:00.000-07:00

Love it or hate it, World of Warcraft is the 900-pound gorilla of the MMO market at the moment. Nearly everyone who games online has at least tried it, and even those of us who play other games very possibly still play it as an old standby. So it's hard to miss the news about the newest expansion, Cataclysm, which is poised to remake the world in many ways. It's also home to an ambitious series of overhauls to classes and their talent structure, with far-reaching changes for every class in the game.

Our sister site, WoW.com, has been keeping abreast of the development team's slow roll of new information about each class, with every class but Paladins having their upcoming changes previewed. (Paladins are due out on the 16th, due to being "deep in development.") They've also gone through an in-depth analysis of each different set of changes, from the good to the bad. So if you've played the game at all -- and the odds are you have -- take a look past the break for a quick version of everything coming when World of Warcraft brings down the end of the world.

Guild life pre-Cataclysm: Surviving the end times

2010-05-15T19:02:00.001-07:00

When I inherited leadership of a successful 25-man raid during The Burning Crusade, I had a steep learning curve. After the first year, I had mastered the fine arts of recruiting, juggling subs, managing raid time, resolving disputes and running a tight ship. Little did I know what awaited us when halfway through our Sunwell Plateau progression, Wrath of the Lich King was announced! Fortunately, my guild was able to weather the storm, and now that we are closing in on Cataclysm, I am much better prepared.

Guild masters who haven't experienced the pre-expansion blues may find themselves overwhelmed with the task of keeping their once tight-knit community from turning into a ghost town. Some players may choose the months before an expansion to take an extended vacation from the game. Others may choose to focus on a favorite alt, and still others are chomping at the bit to farm the highest tier of raid content in order to complete their ideal gear sets. No doubt all three types of players are in your guild. How are you expected to funnel everyone's pre-expansion desires and expectations into group-friendly activities that keep them logging on night after night?

Keeping a raiding guild together during the months before an expansion can be a daunting task for a first-timer. Here a few tips and tricks I learned from the last expansion:

Find out what people's plans are. Does your MT want to take an extended break from the game? Are your top DPSers begging to switch to their alts for raid content? Is your best healer logging in less and less as BlizzCon draws closer? Is the guy you just recruited bitterly complaining that raids are more and more infrequent? Talk to your guild as a whole and ask them what they want to do with their time. Often, you'll find that there are ways to keep burned out players interested in the game while pleasing the more active ones.
Set an end date for raiding activities. Players often burn out at the mere thought of running the last tier of content forever. An end date gives a clear-cut block of time for relaxation before the coming expansion, and you'll find that a lot of players will thank you.
Start an alt program. Whether it be an alt raid or rotating alts in on farm nights for a chance at gear, you'll find many raiders will tackle content with renewed vigor if it's from a different perspective. Be sure to be fair about it, though -- alts must be reasonably geared for the tier of content, and they must not be allowed to take gear over the mains that are carrying them through.
Give sponsored nights off to players who are extremely burned out, or let them play their off spec for the night. Can you 24-man the first wing of ICC? Great! Give that healer who's been begging for some extra sleep a night off with no penalty. Alternately, let him DPS for an evening. Be sure to extend the offer to other players who are feeling run down.
Set up some fun activities to shake up the monotony. The achievement system is a great source of ideas for your raid. Never completed The Immortal in Naxx? Take an hour and a half and go for it! Take an evening to grab your protodrakes from Ulduar, or go get A Tribute to Mad Skill on Heroic Anub'Arak. The possibilities are endless, but be sure to keep it low-key so that it feels more like a fun vacation and less like extra work.
Speed runs became a fad in The Burning Crusade, during the incredibly long span of time between the releases of Black Temple and Sunwell Plateau. A 25-man can compete against their own or others' best times for an instance, or several 10-man groups from the same guild can compete for prizes. Find ways to make it interesting!
Use an incentive program. At the end of each expansion, I liquidate the guild bank and split the spoils among the players who are still active at my end date. It makes everyone very happy to get a payout for their time and effort, and can often sway people to stick around for a cut of the spoils.
If you absolutely can't keep it together, grab your active players and offer your guild's services to another group on the server that's struggling for numbers. By helping others, you'll get your raid fix, and you can be sure that the other group's leader will thank you.

Whatever route you decide to go in order to breathe life back into your guild before an expansion, be sure to communicate your intentions with your guild members. Pre-expansion apathy can be tough going for even a seasoned guild master, but remember: This is the famine before the feast. In a few months, the hectic scrambling to hold things together will be replaced by an overflowing roster and a band of refreshed guildmates ready to stomp through tiers of new content.

Cryptozoic posts Wrathgate visual spoilers

2010-05-15T18:56:00.000-07:00

If you're interested in the upcoming Wrathgate expansion for the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, then Cryptozoic has a treat for you: spoilers for the May 25 expansion. If you're dying to see what cards will be entering the game, to look at some new art or just to see if you recognize anyone on the hero cards, get thee hence and check out the images. Then you can spend the next two weeks feverishly anticipating the release of the expansion. Not that I would know anything about feverishly anticipating an expansion. Not me. No, sir. Nothing doing.

Cryptozoic's also been doing detailed previews of certain cards, discussing their impact on competitive play and their place in certain decks, so you can check that out while you're on their blog anyway.

Side note: I really dig the draenei figure on this card. I know, I know, blueberry LOL whatever, man. He looks badass and you know it.

WoW Cataclysm profession preview

2010-05-13T07:18:00.000-07:00

Blizzard has just released a large preview of the major changes coming to professions in Cataclysm. We already know that there will be new recipes to craft and materials to gather, and that there will be another 75 points of skillups required; however we haven't really seen a clear and concise outline of what's changing until now. Listed below are the major changes to the overall professions, as well as new enchants and gem modifications.

Blizzard's full announcement after the break.

The highlights:

Blacksmithing, Leather working, and Tailoring specializations removed.
Blacksmithing, Leather working, and Tailoring will create their starter sets of PvP gear, which will be upgraded with new recipes every season.
New elixirs will be about 75% as strong as flasks.
An enchanter vanity pet is being added.
Engineering is still being designed, but expect new unpredictable gadgets to use on yourself or enemies.
Engineering will be able to make powerful bows, crossbows, and guns.
Scribes will see a "cleaning up" of minor glyphs.
Three new First Aid bandages.

New Cataclysm weapon enchantments:

Avalanche -- Chance to deal Nature damage on melee hit/spell hit.
Elemental Slayer -- As expected, this enchantment helps players deal devastating damage to elemental creatures.
Hurricane -- A stacking haste proc.
Heartsong -- Mana regeneration through increased Spirit when chain-casting spells.
Many more maximum-level enchantments are still in progress.

Gem changes:

Hit is now Blue.
Mastery and dodge are Yellow.
Intellect is now Red.

Wryxian

While the Cataclysm updates to many of the professions are still deep in development, we wanted to share some of the work that's been going on, as well as a high-level look at any lessons learned or changes to their underlying philosophies during the design process. Please be aware that not all professions have the same extent of information available right now, but each is receiving the same love and attention as the next.

Take heed of these teasers as you look forward to your new rank of Illustrious Grand Master!

Please enjoy!

General

Perks will continue to exist across all professions, and will upgraded appropriately.

Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Tailoring

Many of the green (and possibly some blue) items made during the process of leveling these professions will contain random stats. In most examples, two stats on these items will be set, and two will be random. The idea with these items is to mix up the skill leveling items so you're not just, for example, creating 10 pairs of boots that are all exactly the same.
Superior-quality items that require more materials than other recipes in the same skill range provide multiple skill-ups. For example, if a recipe takes three times the reagents, it will give you three skill-ups.
We didn't feel like we were getting much flexibility from specializations, so they have been removed for all three of these professions. The intent was to help people diversify their profession to feel different from that of other players, but through other professions we've found systems that work better to this end, such as simply making recipes available that you can earn over time.
To follow up the previous change, all items that required a specialization are now useable by anyone.
Tailoring the high-end Cataclysm items will center around a single cloth type that can be crafted through five different recipes -- each with their own material components and a long cooldown.
All three professions will create their starter sets of PVP gear, which will be upgraded with new recipes every season. In general, these are meant to keep pace as an entry-level PvP set below whatever the current Hero Point set is.

Alchemy

New elixirs will be about 75% as strong as flasks. So you can get more total stat points with two elixirs, but flasks will still be the best at giving you a single offensive or defensive stat.
New unique material used by nearly all high-level recipes will be created by alchemists on a one-day cooldown.
New Mysterious Potion created with common materials restores health and mana in a massively random range, as well as sometimes granting the benefit of another potion. The health and mana range is from 1-20,000 and is able to crit. The minimum amount restored, however, is scaled upwards by the Alchemy skill, making it a great choice for alchemists to keep for themselves.
All potions and elixirs now use the same basic vial type. Flasks still use a fancy vial.
New Alchemist Stone.

Enchanting

In general, material component costs for most recipes are more moderate in how much they require, while the highest-end recipes will still require large quantities. The goal of this change is to make the leveling recipes more consistent and not create unintended roadblocks in getting to the higher skill levels.
An enchanter vanity pet is being added.

New Cataclysm weapon enchantment preview:

Avalanche -- Chance to deal Nature damage on melee hit/spell hit.
Elemental Slayer -- As expected, this enchantment helps players deal devastating damage to elemental creatures.
Hurricane -- A stacking haste proc.
Heartsong -- Mana regeneration through increased Spirit when chain-casting spells.
Many more maximum-level enchantments are still in progress.

Engineering

Engineering is still being designed, but expect new unpredictable gadgets to use on yourself or enemies. Toys, explosives, and even a new vanity pet or two. Oh, and powerful mechanical bows and crossbows in addition to guns.
In general, we want Engineering to remain a tradeskill mainly focused on creating fun or useful gadgets for the engineer, but we are exploring options for items that can be sold to other players for profit.

Inscription

With the large number of class changes coming with Cataclysm, many existing glyphs will see new functionality.
Minor glyphs are woefully uneven from one class to the next right now, so they're a focus for us to clean them up and try to ensure that everyone has minor glyphs they're excited about.
New Darkmoon Cards will be added, with hopes they'll all be as awesome as the Greatness card.
We'll be adding more major glyphs as well, but in the hopes of making them as balanced as possible, we'll likely wait until after the expansion ships to add any for the new abilities in Cataclysm.
New and more desirable off-hand and relic recipes will be added.

Jewelcrafting

Some gem colors have changed! Hit is now blue. Mastery and Dodge are yellow. Intellect is now red. These simple changes have created a much more diverse matrix of gem cuts.
New Jewelcrafting dailies will be introduced.
Many cuts are being added to support the new Mastery stat.
Some new Cataclysm jewelry recipes have completely random properties, and can sometimes create superior and epic versions.
Jewelcrafters will have some fun new (and potentially lucrative) vanity items, including fist weapons, rhinestone sunglasses, monocles, and stardust (sprinkle on players for entertainment).

Herbalism, Skinning, and Mining

All Cataclysm herbs have the chance of containing Volatile Life.
There won't be a new Lotus equivalent in Cataclysm. Alchemists will use the more reliably-found Volatile Life to create the new high level flasks.

Herb Example:

"Heartblossom -- Named for its deep red color, this delicate flower grows close to the ground, and always in pairs. If one blossom is taken, the other flower begins to wilt immediately and dies soon after. It is considered very unlucky to disturb a Heartblossom without blessing it first."
Savage Leather, the basic Cataclysm leather, can be gathered from most creatures found in the expansion areas and can be converted to Heavy Savage Leather at a 6:1 rate.
Pristine Hide, the rare Cataclysm hide, can be found when skinning creatures in the expansion areas, or be converted from Heavy Savage Leather.
Obsidian is the new common mineral found when mining in Cataclysm, and can contain gems, Volatile Fire, and Volatile Shadow.
Elementium is the new uncommon mineral found when mining in Cataclysm, and can contain gems, Volatile Fire, Volatile Water, or Volatile Earth.
Pyrite is the new rare mineral found when mining in Cataclysm, and can contain gems and Volatile Fire.
Previous Elementium Ore and Bar used for classic quests will be renamed to Elementium Ingot and Hardened Elementium Bar.
We like the gathering perks as they are; not a game-changing bonus but something themed and fun. But as all tradeskills are in the design stages these are still being discussed to a degree.

Cooking

Cooking is still in the early stages, but we plan on continuing with daily quests, feasts, and some fun new recipes.
We liked the cooking dailies that had players picking up items that spawned in the world near the quest giver, so most if not all new cooking dailies will work similarly.

First Aid

Bandages will have a short cast time and put a heal over time effect on the target for 8 seconds. This effect is broken by damage.
Three new bandages! That's right: THREE!

Bandage preview:

"Dense Embersilk Bandage" Heals for 34,800 over 8 seconds. Requires 3 Embersilk to create.

Fishing

Lots of new fish and other fun items to catch! Fish are still used to make premium food.
New fishing dailies.

WoW Magazine issue 2 preview now online

2010-05-13T07:06:00.000-07:00

The preview for issue 2 of the World of Warcraft Official Magazine is up for browsing. It is 46 pages and highlights four subjects covered in the 148-page publication:

Dragons All of the dragonflights are described in detail along with a glossary of all dragon terms.
40-man raids Tackling 40-man raids with level 80s
Warsong Gulch Strategies for WSG
Community Columns Members of the community contribute columns

The WoW Magazine is quarterly, by subscription only and has no ads. It's subscription price starts at $39.95 for a year.

Gold Capped: Engineering isn't so useless after all

2010-05-13T06:47:00.000-07:00

In World of Warcraft, engineers are a bunch of goofy characters who speak in childishly high voices and have a tendency to blow themselves up by accident in humorous ways. Anyone else sense that whoever did the concept art at Blizzard for gnomish and goblin engineers flunked out of engineering?

Anyways, while engineering is an amazing profession for certain parts of the game, it's dead last when it comes to making money- wow gold cheats. There are only really a few things engineers can do to make cash.

Wryxian

In general, we want Engineering to remain a tradeskill mainly focused on creating fun or useful gadgets for the engineer, but we are exploring options for items that can be sold to other players for profit.

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This quote was from the Cataclysm profession preview we posted about earlier. Engineering is currently barely ahead of farming in terms of income potential, and it's nice to see that Blizzard acknowledges this and might fix it.

Not all hope is lost, though. A savvy player can eak out a living if they focus on the right markets. First off, the elephant in the room: selling epic ammo.

Epic Ammo

Iceblade Arrows are the most popular ammo in the game now. The most accessible (and thus popular) weapons for hunters seem to be bows or crossbows. Despite my good buddy Brian's refusal to use them, they remain the lion's share of the epic ammo market. The bullet equivalent, Shatter Rounds, are also sold, but in much lower quantity.

Gnomish engineers (the specialization, not the race) can buy Plans: Iceblade Arrow from Alchemist Finkelstein in the Icecrown Citadel for the cost of one Primordial Saronite. Goblin specs can get Plans: Shatter Rounds. That's a pretty hefty price to get into the market; however, it pays off if you can make any amount of profits. Bear in mind, you need to be honored with the Ashen Verdict. Check out this Insider Trader from last December for the whole story.

Once you can make your ammo, it's just a matter of selling it. Hunters tend to stock up on these, but there's a definite demand surge on Tuesdays before raids (like many raiding consumables). The demand is pretty high all the time, though, so keeping your stock listed all the time will increase your market size. Pricing your ammo is a little tricky, however. Assuming you're not the only person selling these, you will need to decide on a strategy and stick to it. The mats for the arrows are two Crystallized Shadow, or two Crystallized Earth for the bullets. Eternal Shadow and Earth prices are typically fairly low. On my server, shadow can be gotten for 3.5g pretty reliably, which makes a stack of 1,000 arrows cost 70 silver to make. These stacks often sell for close to 10 gold.

You have to decide whether to undercut by a slight amount and share the volume at higher profits, or undercut heavily and get a larger slice of the pie at a lower profit margin. Bear in mind that lower prices on the AH will increase the size of the pie, too. Arrows are not "fixed demand" commodities. In fact, there are no fixed demand commodities in the game. People will never just buy something, no matter the price. Whether high volume with lower profitability is more money in the end than lower volume with higher profitability is something you have to calculate yourself.

Now you may ask yourself why I'm not advocating multiple stack sizes here. The reason for that is that no hunters ever want to buy less than a full stack of ammo. If they ever do purchase that, it's by accident, and if you sell small stacks of ammo for the same price as a full stack, there's a special place in hell for you. I'm not saying that hunters don't make mistakes and not double-check the three-point font number below the icon on the 10th stack they buy -- but I am saying that if you are the person standing there ready to take 10g from a well intentioned client, you are a failure. Karma will work it all out in the end, and in the meantime, all you've done is ruin someone's day (and possibly raid night).

Non-combat pets

Cute, lovable and pointless. It's the perfect storm of economic success. Engineers can make several sellable non-combat pets. The ones that are in the highest demand are the recently made BoE pets from Gnomeregan, and I went over the crafting mats and pricing schemes for these in another post.

Additionally, there are a bunch of other pets engineers can sell, some of which are very hard to learn and might be worth a lot of money if you can keep a small stock on the AH at all times. The schematics for these are impossible to farm, so add them to your snatch list and buy it if they're ever on the AH. These usually sell very well for a nice profit margin.

Lifelike Mechanical Toad is taught by an extremely rare schematic.
Mechanical Squirrel Box is also learned through a rare world drop schematic.
Crashin' Thrashin' Robot is learned, again, through a rare world drop schematic.
Tranquil Mechanical Yeti is probably the easiest to learn, being a reward from a quest.

Gathering

In addition the the ability to make a few things for the AH, engineers can make themselves a Zapthrottle Mote Extractor, which allows you to farm elementals from gas clouds (which you can see on your map if you have the extractor in your inventory). This is a minor benefit, but assuming you spend any time outside the auction house, it's a benefit.

Random items needed by others

Last but not least, we have this list of random items that are occasionally needed by others.

Heartseeker Scopes are required every time someone equips a new gun.
If you can make this, the Biznicks 247x128 Accurascope is a very niche but very profitable alternative to the Heartseeker.
Alchemists who want to sell you Goblin Rocket Fuel will need the recipe that you can make, and blacksmiths who want to sell you Inlaid Mithril Cylinders will need the plans you can make.
Engineers are the only known source for Aquadynamic Fish Attractors and Salt Shakers (needed for Cured Rugged Hide).
The Elemental Seaforium Charge is still in high demand for people working their way through Outland or opening things with a lock of under 350 skill.

And the following items are needed for quests:

Overcharged Capacitor
Adamantite Frame
Hi-Explosive Bombs and Unstable Triggers in stacks of 8
Mithril Casing
Gyrochronatom
Bronze Tube
Advanced Target Dummy
Deadly Blunderbuss (Horde only)

Warriors: The changing face of AoE

2010-04-24T08:34:00.000-07:00

I can't even believe I'm typing this, but frankly, enough is enough. Yet another long thread about warrior AoE tanking in Cataclysm and frankly, I'm sick to death of the debate. Let's break this down into its simplest component parts.

AoE tanking is going to be cut back in Cataclysm, as will AoE DPS.
There will be more use of CC and more danger that trying to tank a lot of adds can kill the tank.
With 1 and 2 being the case, warriors most likely have enough tools for multi-mob tanking situations.

Ghostcrawler - Re: Twitter chat on Warrior AoE tankingOur goals are that you won't be spending as much of your tanking time AE tanking in Cataclysm as you did in Lich King. A second goal is that when you are AE tanking, you should use different abilities than when you are single-target tanking. A third goal is that when you are AE tanking, you should use more than one (or maybe two) abilities. None of those seem contradictory. ...

Maybe I'm misremembering something, but the goal going into LK was that warriors should be able to AE tank rather than every group using paladins for trash, and that casters should be able to use their AE spells, otherwise what are they there for? We succeeded in both of those, but a little too well on the latter to the extent that anything with more than 1 mob became a job for Blizzard / Hurricane / Mind Sear, etc.

In Cataclysm, there will be more threat to the tank of dying if you try to just AE tank every pull. Likewise, AE damage won't be quite as awesome so that single targeting things will probably be a better strategy when there are say 3-5 adds. If it's a dozen twilight whelps, then sure, AE away.

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Asking for another AoE tanking tool when the stated goal is that there will be less AoE tanking and that AoE tanking will be inherently more dangerous is like asking for a meat suit to go diving with sharks. Not only is it not necessary and possibly even dangerous to encourage it, but just as you're already made of more than enough meat to attract sharks without actually wearing more, you've already got enough AoE for the new instances. If anything, expect other tanks to be brought more in line with the warrior AoE tanking model.

To my mind, the issues with the new tanking paradigm in Cataclysm, from a warrior perspective, aren't any need for more AoE at all. Rather, we need the following.

Tanking warriors need a smooth and reliable way to control their own threat generation rather than having it band-aid controlled for them by abilities like Tricks of the Trade or Misdirection.
Tanks need to have sufficient short-term cooldowns to be able to endure increased risk of death from trash tanking when it is necessary to do so. (I would argue that warriors are almost there in this regard and would only need the glyphs of Last Stand and Shield Wall to be baked into the abilities to be fine in this regard. Other tanking classes might need work here.)
DPS warriors will need a viable form of CC in this new world.
The first of these three might well be given to warriors via the Vengeance mechanic worked into all tanks' mastery abilities. We also know warriors will be given new ways to ensure rage generation when it is needed, which is often a great component of the difficulty in locking down early threat. The second, we more or less have addressed, but it would be nice to see it without a two-glyph requirement.

But it's DPS warriors I'm the most concerned about as we shift back to CC as a requirement for a successful instance run. While it's fair to say that Wrath swung the pendulum too far to the point where AoE tanking was the expected norm and CC abilities were used sparingly at best, no one who remembers trying to get a DPS slot on a class without a reliable form of CC in Burning Crusade can entirely welcome its return with open arms.

It's possible that new abilities like Disarming Nature will serve as warrior CC. It's hard to imagine a 10-second duration cower effect being as valuable as a sap or sheep, of course. And with the LFD tool doubtlessly changing the way we group, it's possible we'll simply just have to grin and bear it when we get queued in a group with no viable form of CC and struggle our way through an instance.

The issue with giving DPS warriors a form of CC is of course that it will be used in PvP. People who played in MC remember Mace Specialization and Stormherald, which was colloquially called "Stunherald." Nobody wanted to face an arms warrior with mace spec and that thing in his or her hands, not even other arms warriors. (I once saw two arms warriors stun each other for a solid 25 seconds or so.) There are ways around this ... Make the CC something that would impede NPCs but not PCs, like a root or snare or pacify effect or cower, something that could easily be countered by a player but which would keep an NPC from using its abilities ... and it may not even be necessary. But if you want to keep some DPS specs from being wildly more popular than others in a game environment where CC comes even close to the level of prominence it had in BC dungeons and heroics, then you have to consider some form of CC.

Frankly, demanding more AoE threat for warrior tanks is wanting new abilities to tank old content. We're not going to see dungeons and raids designed around those kinds of pulls anymore. What warriors need are tools that give them viability when tanking and DPSing the new content that awaits us.

WoW Rookie: Tips and tricks for rookies

2010-04-24T08:27:00.000-07:00

Oh come on, everyone knows that -- well, evidently everyone but you, poor rookie. Ever felt like a chump for not being aware of some game feature or function that would've made life so much easier, if only you'd known? Aww, it's OK. You're not alone. As accessible as designers strive to make games like WoW, it's easy for even a few basics to slip by, especially when you're brand new, thrashing about trying to find your quest objective and attack the monster and talk to that other player all at the same time.

Blizzard's tutorial tips help make sense of a lot of that under-the-radar knowledge. Still, players write in to WoW Rookie every week asking questions or offering various nuggets of acquired wisdom. Time then for another info dump -- the latest in our collection of frequently requested, handy things to know.

Unlearn your profession Finding the place to drop an unwanted profession has got to be one of the more annoyingly obscure functions in the game. Go to your character info, then the skills tab, and then click on the bar that lists the profession you want to get rid of. Now look at the bottom third of the skills panel; you'll see another bar listing the profession, and to the right of it, a small, red icon of a circle with a slash through it. (Check out the screenshot at the top of the post.) If you click that tiny red button, you'll get a pop-up confirmation box that asks you whether or not you'd like to drop that profession. (Whew!)

Some disenchanted evening Been automatically smacking the disenchant button every time an unwanted blue or green drops in your instances? You may be doing yourself a disservice ... The item's vendor value may in fact be higher than the value of the enchanting material you just won. Enchanting mat prices vary widely from realm to realm, but many economies are seeing vendor prices overtaking mat prices in certain level ranges. Pro tip: Visit the auction house and take note of the prices for mats at the level of whatever instances you'll be running. Then before you choose to roll DE or greed, check the tooltip for the item's vendor value to ensure you're selecting the best deal every time.

(On a related note, if you only seem to receive the disenchant option for some items that drop in your instance, it may be your group enchanter's skill level that's the issue. If your enchanter is light on skill points, he -- and therefore, your group -- might be able to disenchant green drops but not blues or epics.)

Lost and found Can't remember which way to head around the darned loop in Undercity to find your trainer? Ask a guard. Guards that show a map symbol when moused over will offer a menu of destinations if you right-click to speak with them. Once you've selected your destination, a red flag icon will appear in your map and minimap to mark the location.

Where's the flight master in this town, anyway? Speaking of finding important figures, the tracking button on your minimap allows you to find flight masters and other useful resources such as mailboxes, armor repairers and innkeepers. Right-click the tracking button on your minimap. (If you don't see one, you probably have an addon that's blocking it. Try disabling your addons to see.)

Pop that trinket If you've poked around with macros at all, you may be stumped at how to use a trinket in a macro. Here's the trick that will direct the action to your trinket slots:

/use 13
/use 14

You can find a list of the corresponding numbers for every gear slot at the official site (or, you know, just look over yonder to the side), along with a slew of other tips on making macros.

Is my character still there? If it's been weeks, months or even (/gasp) years since you last played World of Warcraft, will your old character still be there when you log in? Yes! Unless you physically delete your character (which requires typing "DELETE" into a big confirmation field -- not something easily accomplished by accident), your character and all their goodies will still be there. The only thing that expires is mail left in your inbox for more than 30 days.

Speaking in tongues Click on the chat bubble icon on your chat box and scroll to the language option in order to change the language your character speaks. Language changes will show up in say, shout, guild and party chat, but not in general chat, trade chat or whispers. (Pro tip: Speaking obscure languages in guild chat is a good way to annoy guildmates and get yourself put on ignore.)

Your name not in lights Yes, it is possible to take screenshots without character names in them. You can remove your UI entirely by pressing Alt+Z (pressing Alt+Z again restores it). To remove those stubborn names: Go to your game menu (escape), select Interface, and scroll down and select Names. You can uncheck as many names as necessary for the effect you want. (Just remember to turn them on again afterwards!)

Make sense of it all Do you find yourself sucked in by the lore of Azeroth and hungry to learn more? Read up: Lore 101 will set you straight.

Wondering if there's an easier way to do something? Maybe you've gone and figured out the method to the madness all on your own. Send us your questions, tips and discoveries (lisa at wow dot com), and we'll collect them for a future tips and tricks edition of WoW Rookie. Meanwhile, check WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide for everything you need to get off to a good start as a newbie, whether you're a new level 1 or a fresh level 80.

Raid Rx: Tank and healer disagreements

2010-04-24T08:21:00.000-07:00

One way I like to destress from raiding is by doing more raiding. Am I crazy? Yeah, probably. The only difference is that I like to raid on my alt as a DPS class of some sort. If I'm not busy Divine Storming, I'm taking a page from Shatner and unloading bolts of lightning in Icecrown.

The funny thing about joining pickup groups is that everyone seems to know more about everyone else's class than the players themselves do. For one thing, the tanks appear to know more than the healers and the healers know more than the tanks. What gives? Let me outline what happened.There had been a little friction going on in the raid as we were heading up to Festergut. I didn't think it was anything substantial. It sounded like generic pug chatter. Anyway, once we get to the orange gas boss, things started out routinely enough. The healers stood in the center of the room and we had enough ranged DPS on the outside. Spores were synchronized. We hit the third inhale and Festergut started absolutely destroying the tank. I didn't think he was going to make it. Sure enough, several seconds later, the tank died and we all wiped.

The healing priest we had with us became upset. He wanted to know why the bear didn't pop his cooldowns. The priest had a spore up at the time and had to run out to the ranged and wasn't able to heal through the incoming damage. Naturally, the bear tank became livid and roared back asking where his Pain Suppression was.

The priest responded and said, "First of all, I'm holy." But the point was moot as the tank already took off. Another raid ended in a shouting match because of the players involved, no one wanted to take responsibility or bury the hatchet and move on. The raid was effectively shot at that point. No one wants to come in when the first four bosses of Icecrown have been taken down. Most players still want the badges or the gear.

Forget about establishing fault for a moment. Shouldn't the immediate priority be on hammering out solutions instead of identifying fault? Going back to Festergut here, the raid knew that the boss would swing that much harder. There are significantly geared tanks out there who can easily absorb that kind of punishment without having to rely on any cooldowns at all whatsoever. As this is a pug, I'd assume that bad things would happen and prepare for them.

Think about your outs

Imagine for a moment that World of Warcraft was like poker. Look at the cards you're dealt and think about how many outs you have in order to survive or to advance. Going back to the Festergut example, we had access to two paladins: One was protection specced and the other was retribution specced. We had a holy priest and a shaman but there wasn't much he could contribute from a life saving perspective. Lastly, there was our bear tank who had his own cooldowns. We had four outs in the raid. There were four ways that tank could have survived.

Something I've noticed is that unless these are coordinated in advance, players rarely use them! Perhaps they just assume that someone else with a cooldown will use theirs first so that they don't have to. When I play on my retribution paladin, I always keep my fingers on Divine Sacrifice just in case. You never know, right?

I don't know about you or your raids, but I personally prefer having tanks light up their defensive cooldowns first. They can give an advance notice on when their cooldowns will expire. Healing cooldowns can then be overlapped on top to further stretch out survivability.

Check that ego at the door!

It's unfortunate that the raid ended the way it did. I had high hopes that Festergut and Rotface would be taken down. I honestly thought that we had a good shot at them as well.

All I want to say is the next time you sense you're about to become involved in a confrontation or a conflict similar to the one above, be willing to back down. My guess is you want your badges and loot. When it comes to tactics, not everyone runs the same playbook. For the sake of group cohesion, I've even backed down once or twice even though I fully knew I did nothing wrong (and others in the group confirmed that as well). It's nice to be right all the time, but I get annoyed when things fall apart.

Sometimes, the best course of action is to simply take a deep breath and calm down. Instead of looking for faults, find out different options that can be done in the future to prevent this wipe from happening again. And above all, don't aggravate another person for the sake of aggravating them. I don't know why people do this but it's simply unnecessary. Work on de-escalating a situation as it tends to lead to a better outcome for everyone. Maybe we won't have as many players abandoning raids.

The correct play

In any event, I think the best play that could've happened here on Festergut was getting the priest to priest acknowledge that they had to run out of the middle to get the spore on the rest of the group. The tank should have ignited their cooldown and then the priest could have used his after it expired. If only things could have been done differently.

WoW Heroic speed runs

2010-04-24T08:01:00.000-07:00

Most of us have been running heroics since the daily random quest was first introduced with TotC, and since then we've been running them every day, on every one of our 80s, for what seems an eternity. Even over-gearing them and short dungeon finder queues can no longer keep the heroic grind from being mind-numbingly dull.

Enter speed runs.

By speed runs, I'm not talking about just going fast. Even PUGs these days move pretty quickly through heroics. I'm talking about going as fast as you possibly can. Racing through the heroics, pulling crazy numbers of mobs, skipping everything skippable. Not only will your heroic run be much shorter, but it will suddenly be much more dangerous too. When you're pushing line of how much you can do, even slight positioning errors or DPS pulling aggro can result in wipes.

Speed runs have the potential to put the challenge back in heroics, and today we're going to talk about how to pull of the best time that you can.

Not for PUGs

Right off the bat, I want to stress this is not something for PUGs. Sure, you can go fast and pull a few packs at a time, but if you try a speed run in a PUG, you're probably destined for a wipe. PUG members are forever wandering off, getting lost, DPSing too soon, begging to hit all those optional bosses, etc. And fair enough, they didn't sign on to blitzkrieg the place.

Definitely get a group of friends together to do this. Just like I don't recommend trying to force PUGs to do your heroic achievements, I don't don't recommend trying to force them to do speed runs. Besides, you'd probably waste any time gained trying to explain to them how you go faster if they don't DPS for a while.

Rule #1: Skip everything

Your first goal in a speed run is to skip as much of the content as possible. Wrath heroics are absolutely filled with optional bosses, many of which people don't realize are optional. Sure, it may only take you 30 seconds to down the boss that you're passing anyway, but 30 seconds is a lot of time to waste on a speed run.

This also means skipping trash whenever possible, which sometimes takes very specific positioning. If just one person wanders too far to the side, you can suddenly pull far more than you bargained for. This is particularly true at the end of Halls of Lightning.

I'll be included a list of all the bosses that I know can be skipped in the tips section at the end of this article.

Rule #2: Punches in bunches

The concept here is that it takes exactly the same amount of time to AoE down four mobs as it does to AoE down 10 mobs. So make big pulls. Gather that first group, then the next, then the next. Check out the first two pulls in the video above -- they're massive. The actual amount that you can pull will depend on you tank and healer, but in general you want to be pulling so much that the tank needs to use tanking cooldowns. Anything less and you're likely wasting time.

Rule #3: Don't DPS ... yet

This seems to be the hardest rules for people to follow -- but do not DPS until your tank has finished pulling everything that he's going to pull. If you start attacking that first group, you will pull aggro. Your tank is busy running toward the next group down the line -- he's just generating enough aggro to keep those mobs of the healer and on his tail. If he stops to compete with you on threat, you won't be moving. DPS are the greatest cause of failure of rule #2. The tank cannot gather up huge packs unless you let him.

Here's what often happens: tank hits first group and moves on. DPSer starts attacking while moving. Either the tank stops pulling and goes back (at which point you're pulling one group at a time), or the DPSer pulls aggro and starts taking damage. The healer heals him and pulls aggro and dies. Now it's a wipe -- or at best, a sloppy, brute-force recovery from a potential wipe. Either way, it's slower. One of the joys of speed runs is that execution matters again, but that means holding off on your DPS.

Once the tank pulls his last pack of mobs, then open up; give it everything you've got. Hunters should absolutely use Misdirection and rogues should use Tricks of the Trade. You'll notice in the video above the tank was a warrior -- arguably the worst at AoE threat -- and he had no problem holding aggro at all even on groups of up to 20 mobs, because the DPS waited until he was done pulling. Sure, if your tank is gearing solely for mitigation and not threat you could have problems -- but then you should be smacking your tank upside the head anyway.

You'll also note that on the video above at the stairway just past King Dred one of the DPSers started attacking on the run, causing the tank to have to run all the way back down the stairs to pick up the stray mob, wasting valuable time.

Heroic speed run tips and tricks

Here's a list of some of the tips and tricks that I've learned while speed running heroics. Most of the time you just follow the three rules of speed runs and you're good. But it also helps to know what is and is not skippable.

Ahn'kahet (Old Kingdom) Prince Taldaram and Herald Volazj are the only two bosses you have to fight, out of the five bosses in the instance. After fighting Taldaram, go down the hallway to the platform at the top of the stairs. Turn right and jump off the ledge there to minimize the trash you have to fight. Be sure that pet classes dismiss their pets before this jump. You should be able to kill Volazj before the second Insanity is cast.
Azjol'nerub The second boss, Hadronox, can be skipped. This is easily accomplished by resetting the mobs in the spiderweb area. Just have a hunter, rogue or night elf as the only one in line of sight of the mobs. They engage the mobs, then Feign Death, Vanish or Shadow Meld. The mobs will all despawn and you have a short window of time to run down to the hold that leads below. Also note that Anub'arak shrugs off DoTs before he submerges; however, you have a tiny window to reapply the DoTs so that he keeps taking damage while submerged. You should be able to kill him after only two submerges, though the final pack of mobs will still come after he's dead.
Culling of Stratholme This place is where speed runs go to die. Almost all of it's on a timer, and you can just hope for good luck in random mob spawns. We like to pull the Infinite Corruptor in with Mal'ganis (though of course you can skip him).
Drak'tharon Keep You can literally skip every boss up until the final boss. To skip Trollgore, just engage him and then run into the next room, and he'll leash. Novos you can just walk through -- he'll engage, but you'll be long gone before the first add appears. Alternatively, you can skirt around the left edge, as you see in the video above.
Forge of Souls Chain pulling can be very dangerous in here, since the mobs actually do significant damage, so be cautious. Bronjahm can be skipped -- just engage him and run past. By the time you get about halfway up the walkway, he'll leash back to his room.
Gundrak Eck is the only skippable boss here that I'm aware of. Big pulls and jumping off ledge shortcuts are your main ways to save time.
Halls of Lightning General Bjarngrim can be skipped -- just choose a path opposite the direction he's patrolling and move on. In the big room past Ionar, the vast majority of the mobs can be skipped if you choose your path very carefully and pull only very specific packs.
Halls of Reflection There's nothing skippable here, and much like CoS, you're pretty much stuck on a timer.
Halls of Stone Maiden of Grief and Krystallus can be skipped. The Tribunal is still slow and painful.
Nexus Nothing is skippable in the Nexus, but you can do some truly massive pulls. My tank is a big fan of pulling Anomalus all the way over to Ormorok's area.
Oculus Nothing skippable here either; however, this instance can be run in about 11 minutes just with good, solid execution. You just need teammates who know where they're going.
Pit of Saron You cannot skip any bosses, but there is a shortcut. Tank Ick as close to the pathway leading up to the tunnel as you can without his leashing (about 20 yards away or so). As soon as he dies, have the entire party mount up. You can then ride up the pathway before the first two packs of mobs get there. You'll still have to fight the second two packs. Also as you're completing the tunnel, be sure to have someone run out ASAP to engage Tyrannus to start his long RP sequence while you're killing the last swarm of tunnel adds.
Trial of the Champion About the only thing you can do here is teach your party to joust.
Utgarde Keep Prince Keleseth can be skipped, but the four mobs in front of him cannot. So clear them and move on. A great deal of the trash can by bypassed, especially the trash immediately in front of and to the side of the base of the staircases. Just hug right and keep moving.
Utgarde Pinnacle Svala and Gortok (the statues encounter) can be skipped. When you engage Skadi, don't hesitate but move as quickly as possible to the harpoon launchers and AoE the adds down. If you're lucky, you'll get all three harpoons you need on the first pass. When you're fighting King Ymiron, remember that you can use your PvP trinket and various class and racial abilities to break out of his stuns, giving you more DPS time.

As you start to think about heroic from a speed run perspective, you'll start to notice more and more trash that you can skip with careful positioning. You'll start to think of 20 seconds as an insanely long time to waste on anything and you'll find that heroics may actually start to get your blood pumping again.

What pro tips do you guys have for speed runs of heroics? What secret do you know that can shave a good chunk of time off a run? Did I miss any other bosses that you can bypass?

WoW Patch 3.3.3 PTR changes for mages

2010-02-28T06:38:00.000-08:00

So anyway. It's always an exciting time around here when a new patch hits the PTR. We all wake up, head down to the living room and gather beneath the tree to open our presents. Sometimes the bounty is rich, and we reap a choice harvest of new content and features. Other times the crop is more meager. And while patch 3.3.3 doesn't seem to have brought with it the largest pile of new stuff we've ever seen, it's turning out to be a bit more generous than I'd have previously suspected.

Yes, for those of us who play this game, a new patch is just like Christmas. You just never know what you're going to get. Will that gaily wrapped parcel contain an N64? Or a hideous sweater? A huge buff? Or a soul-crushing nerf? Let's all head over to the PTR together and start unwrapping, shall we?

Arcane

Arcane Empowerment: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc off of critical strikes. The self damage buff remains unchanged.

This, in essence, removes any small stress you might have once felt about keeping Arcane's raid damage buff up. Now it'll simply always be there, instead of being a near-constant proc from critical strikes. A slight but welcome change.

Incanter's Absorption: This talent now only grants additional spell power when damage is absorbed by Mana Shield, Frost Ward, Fire Ward, or Ice Barrier. The limit of 5% of the mage's health on the spell power buff has been removed.

This, on the other hand, is a massive, steaming pile of crap. Farewell, Incanter's Absorption, we hardly knew ye. This talent was one of the most interesting, potentially powerful, and plain fun mechanics available to arcane mages, and now it's just not worth the talent points. Let's hope as the PTR progresses this talent will regain some of its former glory.

To break it down, let me use the following tortured metaphor:

Imagine you are presented with two delicious pies to choose between. One of them, the baker tells you, is more delicious than the other. This particular pie is an acquired taste, though, and will take some time to fully appreciate. Also, it is full of sharp razor blades, and thus will require great care and skill in order to eat it without maiming yourself. Still, you think to yourself, the pie's so tasty, it's worth the extra trouble.

Then the baker tells you that you are only allowed to eat it with your hands tied behind your back, using only your face.

This concerns you.

Finally, he discloses that he has taken a huge dump in the tastier pie before baking it, making it far less delicious than it once might have been.

Suddenly, the other pie looks like a far wiser choice.

Incanter's Absorption, like so many of the more interesting mechanics in this game, seems to have proven too difficult to balance for Blizzard. Teamwork, timing, skill, and luck all played a vital role in determining its usefulness. Unfortunately, some mages have apparently used it a bit too skillfully, and so a nerf has come.

Previously, if you had a priest willing to shield your mage, you could stack up the spellpower bonus to the 5% of your maximum health cap, which for many mages was a very high amount, something in the neighborhood of 1,000 spellpower or more. Under the right circumstances, with the right raid group, against the right bosses, this could be--and often was--an extremely powerful buff.

With the PTR changes applied, the mage is limited to his own shielding spells to build up the buff. Since Mana Shield is too great a drain on your mana pool to be a reliable method of stacking the spellpower buff, the only viable options are our warding spells. This means that we can now only absorb up to about 6,000 points of damage every 30 seconds, and that means a maximum buff of 900 or so spellpower for 10 seconds, and then only in fights in which you are taking frost or fire damage. All this at the exorbitant cost of a global cooldown and three talent points. The removal of the 5% cap doesn't factor in, since the only way to reach the previous cap is to use Mana Shield, which will severely gimp your mana pool, eventually costing you far more DPS.

The bottom line is that it is now more prudent to place those three talent points elsewhere, relegating this spell to a rare oddity that some mages will cling to because it was once a great deal of fun, and optimal builds will simply skip over.

A better solution would have been to simply lower the cap, leaving the talent intact, instead of rendering it impotent.

Really, I just want my razor-blade-filled pie back.

Fire

Combustion cooldown has been reduced from 3 min to 2 min.

Here's what Ghostcrawler had to say about this one...

Ghostcrawler

The Combustion change was to let its cooldown line up better with e.g. trinket cooldowns. It just felt awkward at 3 min.

source

...which makes a certain kind of sense. Now you can blow your combustion cooldown every time your trinket cooldown comes up. That's good. But the thing I like most about this is that we're getting those three almost-guaranteed crits a third more often. That should prove to be a solid DPS boost for fire mages, and coupled with the craptastic nerf to Incanter's Absorption should bring fire more in line with arcane's DPS output. A little more guaranteed crit for a spec that's so infinitely dependent upon crits is welcome.

Burning Soul now reduces the threat caused by Fire spells by 10/20%. (Up from 5/10%)

This is another solid DPS boost. A threat reduction of 10% translates loosely into 10% more time you can spend blasting away instead of reigning yourself in. This should provide a slight boost to overall damage output. Fire needed a more consistent, less RNG-based boost, and these two changes are a good start.

This glyph change only continues the trend:

Glyph of Fireball: No longer increases critical strike chance of Fireball. Instead, it now reduces the cast time of Fireball by 0.15 seconds.

Ghostcrawler

The Fireball glyph change was because some Fire mages were getting such absurdly high crit rates that even more crit wasn't attractive. We weren't trying to make this particular glyph ridiculously powerful.

The actual dps increases are something more like adding Pyroblast to Torment the Weak and Empowered Fire. That may have missed the most recent patch notes.

source

This change, like those above, provides a more static boost. The extra crit wasn't a huge help to more powerful fire mages, as Ghostcrawler points out, but the shortened casting time will most definitely be. In case you were wondering, the removal of the DoT effect remains on the glyph.

And the second part of that quote reveals something not yet in the patch notes, the addition of Pyroblast to the spells affected by Torment the Weak and Empowered Fire. This should prove to be a significant straight-up DPS boost for fire when it goes through. I'm always in favor of anything that makes Pyroblast, the single most powerful mage spell in the game, even more powerful.

Frost

Frostbolt: Spell power scaling on this spell has been increased by approximately 5%.

Excellent. Frostbolt needs this kind of buff to bring it in line with the other specs' primary nukes. Frost needs a lot more, but a buff to Frostbolt that scales as our spellpower increases is a step in the right direction.

Brain Freeze: This talent now allows your next Fireball or Frostfire Bolt to be instant and cost no mana. There is a small internal cooldown to keep the Frostfire Bolt from immediately triggering Brain Freeze again.

I'm excited about this. Fireball was always a suspect choice for this proc. A properly-talented frost mage would have zero talent points invested in making Fireball more powerful, but Frostfire Bolt, on the other hand, benefits from a large number of frost talents. I'm not even sure why Blizzard would even leave Fireball on the talent as an option. Frostfire Bolt will be the more powerful choice in every situation here.

So where does all this leave us? It's clear from these patch notes and comments like this...

Ghostcrawler

I would also expect Arcane damage to fall overall with the Incanter's Absorption change. (Torment is also gratuitously overpowered, but that would be too big a change for now.) That should get Fire a lot closer to Arcane. Getting Frost up there too is harder, but we're still trying.

source

...that the devs are trying to level the playing field between the mage specs. This idea cuts both ways. To bring fire and frost up to the level of arcane, those two specs are receiving a few buffs. I'm all for buoying up under-performing specs. But why does doing so require knocking arcane down a peg? Let me say this another way:

I'm near-sighted. Seriously, blind as a bat. Don't ask me how many fingers you're holding up because I don't know. I negotiate my surroundings via sonar. I'm more than a little jealous of folks with natural 20/20 vision. I'd love to have the same eyesight as everybody else. I can accomplish this equality in one of two ways:

I can improve my own vision by wearing glasses, contact lenses, or getting eye surgery. Or...

I can gouge everybody else's eyes out.

Which sounds more reasonable? Keep in mind that we're talking about normal people here, not warlocks. I have no inherent desire to disfigure regular folk.

I just wish the developers could find a way to make all three specs viable without hobbling the most powerful of the three. What's stopping them all from being powerful?

WoW Gold Capped: Auction house addon list

2010-02-28T06:35:00.001-08:00

Every enterprising entrepreneur needs tools to manage their business. These tools will help us overcome the inherent inefficiency of the default UI. The new interface changes coming in patch 3.3.3 will solve some problems (mostly for posting en masse) but will not help us with other parts of the equation.

Auctions

The first thing you'll need is something that will let you manage auctions. I use different addons for different businesses:

Auctioneer is the most rounded and full featured auction house addon available. It keeps a local database of item prices for long term trending data, it has pricing modules that can help you intelligently and automatically price your goods, it can be used to automatically disenchant, mill, and prospect raw goods, and it has a feature that lets you find the best deals for the items you watch. There will be an exhaustive guide to these features coming soon, but for now, download it.

QuickAuctions3 is a single-purpose addon that will be invaluable for any market like glyphs, where you have hundreds of types of items, some of which require listing several auctions at a time. It does two things better than auctioneer: it allows you to cancel undercut auctions efficiently and define more granular undercutting scheme.

Lastly, there's a tiny addon called AHSearch that lets you save searches and access them with a dropdown list. Not efficient for watching hundreds of items, but efficient for commodities.

Mail

The next thing you will need is a good mail addon.

Once you go postal for incoming mail, you never go back. The game's mailbox is capable of serving you 50 mails at a time, and once you pull 50 in from the server, you need to wait 60 seconds before you can get the next 50. Postal knows this, and tells you how many more messages are queued on the server, as well as lets you open all your auction mail automatically. Pro tip: if you've tweak postal to go as fast as it can go, you'll have 40 seconds (depending on lag) of downtime between batches of mail. You can /reloadui to force the next batch to appear, however if you have a lot of addons going, this process might well take more than you would have gotten just by waiting.

For outgoing mail, it's a little more complex. There are addons that were designed to automatically mail certain configurable items to specific characters, however they're out of date. QA3 has a beta feature for this, but I haven't tried it yet. My quick and dirty solution is to use Postal's dropdown list for alts, and use a macro that will fill up my mail with items based on either name or quality.

Here's the macro I modified for mailing by name. Simply change "Saronite O" to whatever it is you're trying to mail:

/run for bag=0,4 do for slot=1,GetContainerNumSlots(bag) do local item=GetContainerItemLink(bag,slot) if item and item:find("Saronite O") then UseContainerItem(bag,slot) end end end

And here's the macro I use to send greens for disenchanting. Be careful about this one-- it will try to send anything that's green quality, so if you have a non-soulbound green you don't want to send, you might want to use the name macro instead:

/run for bag=0,4 do for slot=1,GetContainerNumSlots(bag) do local texture,itemCount,locked,quality=GetContainerItemInfo(bag,slot) if quality==2 then UseContainerItem(bag,slot) end end en

Inventory

The next indispensable addon you will need is something to manage your inventory. When you have a banker with tons of similar looking products and mats, it can be a real time saver to be able to open the filter window of Bagnon and just type in "scroll" to locate all your enchantment scrolls. A nice fringe benefit here is that you can see what's in the bank or bags of any of your characters without having to go to the bank (or that character).

Another addon that can tell you about your inventory that's not at hand is Altoholic-- I don't use it, however, because it's too resource heavy. If you already use it for alts, however, it will add some functionality to your auction house business.

Crafting

Lastly, while you certainly can use the default crafting UI, it's pretty bad. There are no queues, there aren't any market prices, and it's about as dumb as a bag of rocks. If you want to trade up, I highly recommend LilSparky's Workshop (as mentioned in my last column), as well as the LilSparky fork of Skillet. The guy who writes LilSparky is keeping this duct-taped together, but barely. This Skillet fork is a little buggy sometimes, so be prepared to /reloadui, and remember, you can always bypass it by shift-clicking on your tradeskills.

LilSparky, on its own, will add information to just about any tradeskill window showing you your cost to make something, as well as the current market price.

Skillet's killer feature is that you can open your profession window, sort by profitability (or price), and then just craft the things you will make money on. It also supports a queue and shopping list, so you can go through adding all the profitable items that you may not have the mats for now. You then drop by the vendor to pick up your vendor components, your banks and alts to pick up any thing they have that you need with a single "purchase" button. Note: this is the buggiest feature of this addon, so be careful the check what you are about to buy. Sometimes it forgets that you have some of your required mats already.

Addons

The default method of managing addons is manual and annoying. Addon Control Panel (slightly aged WoW.com profile here) helps with the headache. It lets you define profiles and switch between them with a simple UI reload. Also, some addons can be loaded without requiring a reload!

Now what?

Once you have all this stuff installed, start doing regular auctioneer scans so your computer has a good idea of what things are worth. Also, go into every tradeskill you have, and sort LilSparky's data by profitability. Focus on the things you know will sell-- raiding or pvp consumables, permanent gear enhancements, quest items, profession leveling items, etc. If you can't tell, research the item and guess, and learn from your successes and failures. Each profession has something that's profitable, all you need to do is find it!

WoW Cataclysm: New Caverns of Time

2010-02-28T06:28:00.000-08:00

The recent Twitter dev chat confirmed what is fast becoming a tradition: We will be getting a new Caverns of Time instance with the upcoming expansion. It's certainly not something I have much trouble with. The Caverns of Time are an excellent tool for looking back and understanding old pieces of the story that brought us to the current world as it is. Unfortunately, the devs were not willing to drop any hints as to the exact nature of the new instance, but we can, of course, make our own guesses.

The original questioner suggests War of the Ancients as a possible destination. In a way, that might be an interesting battle. It would, if nothing else, give us some insight into the character of Malfurion Stormrage, who promises to be a key figure in the expansion. That said, Rhonin, Broxigar, and Krasus have already traveled back in time to deal with the War of the Ancients, and you'd have to think that if you keep shoveling more time travelers back there, something's bound to give.

As far as my own preference, I'm really hoping to see the Fall of Stormwind to the Orcs as a mission. Many players seem to have only joined for Warcraft III at the earliest, and most do not read the novels or comics, and may not understand how deep the Alliance and Horde rivalry truly goes, and what battles happened in the distant past that have created the type of atmosphere of growing distrust and anger than has only been exacerbated by the events at Wrathgate.

For me, I'd love to see an instance that begins in the Stormwind Throne Room where Garona has just assassinated Llane in front of his sons' eyes. Then we would have to lead Varian out of the castle and through the streets of Stormwind and to Anduin Lothar, who is directing the retreat of the civilians and preparing for the march north to Lordaeron. It would be a great way to get some background on the Horde vs. Alliance thing that promises to heat up even more in Cataclysm, and allow the Alliance to get some quality time with some of their greatest heroes, especially the lion himself, Lothar.

WoW Guide to making BoE engineering pets

2010-02-26T05:09:00.000-08:00

As we mentioned in a recent patch 3.3.3 update, the Pet Bombling and Lil' Smokey engineering manufactured pets are going to be changed to bind on equip. Pets from almost any source are a lucrative market to be in, and this will provide another way engineers can make a bit of cash from their horrible gold sink of a profession. Hunter ammo was a step in the right direction, and this is too.

First up, you need the schematics

Unless you happened to have them already, you will probably need to go farm the schematics. These were formerly unfarmable and tied to one of the two branches of engineering, but now both goblin and gnomish engineers can get them as a random drop.

Schematic: Lil' Smokey is dropped by the Arcane Nullifier X-21, among other mobs. The drop rate in Wowhead says 2%, however that includes all the non-engineers who kill these and don't see the schematic. In reality, it should be much much higher.

Schematic: Pet Bombling is dropped by Mekgineer Thermaplugg, and again, while it shows a low drop rate, that includes all the non-engineers who kill him and can't see the drop. I read comments saying that it's a very high drop rate for engineers. If you kill him, are eligible to get the schematic, and don't see this, let me know in the comments.

In general, the stuff you will need will be in short supply, so you should be prepared to farm or hire a lower level character to farm it for you. Whenever you are farming for something, there's a trick you can use to determine the most effective strategy. Sort the "dropped by" tab on Wowhead.com by "Count" instead of the percent chance. This will indicate where most of the item you're looking at are coming into the market from, and you can either farm them yourself, or identify the people killing the mobs you want, and try to arrange a direct purchase off them.

Making Lil' Smokey

You will require the following mats:

One Core of Earth, farmable

Two Gyrochronatom, each made from
- One Iron Bar
- One Gold Power Core, made in groups of three from
  - One Gold Bar

One Fused Wiring, made in groups of five from
- Three Delicate Copper Wire, made in groups of three from
  - Two Copper Bars

Two Essence of Fire, farmable

Two Mithril Bars

One Truesilver Bar, made from a rare vein found while mining mid-level areas

Making the Pet Bombling

You will require the following mats:

One Big Iron Bomb, made in groups of two from
- Three Iron Bar
- Three Heavy Blasting Powders, made from
  - One Heavy Stone
- One Silver Contact, made in groups of five by
  - One Silver Bar

One Heart of Fire, farmable

One Fused Wiring, made in groups of five from
- Three Delicate Copper Wire, made in groups of three from
  - Two Copper Bars

Six Mithril Bars

Pricing

There are two barriers to making these. Some of the mats are really low supply and not easily farmable. Truesilver, for example. The other barrier is that even the "farmable" mats are often not typically farmed on many servers. You might have to either farm them yourself, or hire a lower level character to farm it for you. Either way, this barrier to entry provides you the opportunity to make sure your margins support your time costs. If making these takes a lot of time and generates a thin margin, you're better off doing whatever you currently do for money, and so are your competitors.

When you price these on the auction house, calculate your materials cost, and then calculate your time cost by figuring out how much you could have made doing something else. If you have few competitors, try listing this pet for the same markup you see opposite faction pets going for.

If your competitors undercut you, you have a choice. You can undercut them back, you can ignore them, or you can buy them out.

Undercutting them back means you will potentially run out of stock faster. If you managed to find a lot of the rare mats for this on the AH, remember that should you increase your production too much, you risk having to farm the mats yourself or hire someone. This will increase your cost.

Ignoring your competitors means you will keep your margins, but lose out on some potential sales. Generally, since these things are such a pain in the bum to make, I'd suggest this alternative.

Buying out a competitor is risky-- if they charge you more than you made yours for, you're essentially giving them money. In most markets, this is just inviting them to mass-produce at a profit and undercut you with a buttload of product. Due to the fact that each of these pets depletes a rarely farmed material, however, you might just drive their cost up past the point where you can be profitably undercut. This will be a temporary situation, however, so you'd better hope you sell all your inventory before they find a way to increase the farming of the "choke point" mats.

Raid Rx: Frustrations of 2-healing a 10-player raid

2010-02-26T05:05:00.000-08:00

This week, I'll be addressing the whole 2 healer thing in 10 mans. There are many things that just happen to annoy the living heck out of me and I wanted to get it out here to see if anyone else shared those frustrations with me. Who knows? Maybe I'm the only one. Maybe as a non-healer, you'll key in on several bad habits to make life easier for your healers. But two healing raids isn't quite the easiest thing to do in the world. Have to give a hat tip to Domni on Plus Heal since I know I'm not the only one who just wants to randomly rage out from time to time.

So what greatly annoys me here?

3 Healing
When a new tier of content is produced, the norm is to bring in 3 healers. You're heading into unknown territory. You don't know what kind of threats you're facing. Better to go at a slower and safer pace lest you run into something surprising or unexpected that causes a wipe. Or maybe two healers just isn't enough to get through it at all.

Overtime, as players become more and more familiar with the instance and acquire more gear, the 3rd healer is eventually replaced with a DPS.

The jet engine analogy
Whenever I get asked to 2 heal heroic level stuff with an undergeared or underskilled raid, I get really nervous. Allow me to introduce the jet engine analogy. I feel safer traveling in a 747 then I do in a 777. Why? The 747 has four engines. The 777 has two engines. You can see where I'm getting at here. If a bird flies into an engine, at least the 747 still has three engines left. If the 777 sucks in a bird, that's 50% of the power gone.

I'm sure there are redundancies and stuff in the event those things actually happen (and planes are still safe to fly in).

In any case, I think my point is clear. If one healer drops in a 3-player healing raid, you still have 2 left instead of just 1.

Now don't get me wrong, 2 healing is okay if some of the conditions are met:

#Players are smart and don't take any extra damage then they need to (as in get out of whatever void zones and fires quick enough).

#Tanks don't die in 2 shots.

#If there happens to a player who can switch out to a healing role should the need arise.

#Content has a high DPS output needed where 2 healing becomes a necessity (such as heroic Anub'arak or Hodir hard mode).

However, that isn't always the case. I'll join various pugs on my various healing characters and I'll get asked if I think I can 2 heal something. I'm not as confident healing on my paladin as I am on my priest (and no joke, I've fallen asleep on my paladin before).

The reasons listed above are all common. Having an extra DPS instead of an extra healer means they can theoretically blow through the encounter at a faster rate. That is, assuming they don't wipe, or a player doesn't die. General flawlessness is to be expected.

There is also an additional factor that raid leaders think about when assembling their group. When you're running a pickup or an alt run, you may not have a 3rd healer handy to jump in. Sometimes, for the sake of getting the group going, they'll call in another DPS anyway just to have a full crew. So yes, in the interest of just getting started, I can see why that can be an attractive option. Understandable since there are often more DPS players available then there are healers.

The alt run
Don't get me started on healing the alt run. I don't like having 2 healers on the alt run. Usually, alts are not as geared as mains. Not all of them. Players have different levels of alt maintenance. Some have to make sure their alts are in the best possible condition with high end gems, enchants, and gear. Others just don't really put that much time or care into their alts. Then they believe that just because they have successfully raided something on their mains, they can pull it off again on their alts.

What ends up happening is you have ranged DPS players who turn into tanks, tanks who turn into healers, healers who become melee DPS, and all sorts of crazy role switches. The roles and the classes get shuffled more than a Russian national hockey team desperate to generate goals.

It doesn't always work out! Sure you may know the mechanics and some of the details, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with having that extra safety net. Since most players are playing on a different character, there are certain things that are done differently compared to their mains.

Everyone starts all over again. Do the group a favor, start back from square 1. Bring in the option of a 3rd healer until everyone becomes familiar with the encounter on their alts.

No matter how hard I try, I simply cannot god mode players out of their own stupidity.

I don't know, maybe it is just me. Maybe it's just heroic Anub that did it. After wiping to him so many times, it has completely destroyed my own confidence and faith in my own healing abilities. I hate that oversized beetle with a passion.

Patch 3.3.3 PTR: Minor Jewelcrafting changes

2010-02-26T04:57:00.000-08:00

Yesterday an updated list of changes for PTR patch 3.3.3 was released. Ranging from new pets and mounts to the LFD dungeon stats being tracked, there have been a lot of tweaks. Jewelcrafting is no exception to the rules of change and like other professions is seeing some small changes.

Icy Prism now requires Frozen Orb, Chalcedony x 1 (Down from 3), Shadow Crystal x 1 (Down from 3), Dark Jade x 1 (Down from 3)

Intricate Bone Figurine (Daily Quest) - Craft an Intricate Bone Figurine by combining the Proto Dragon Bone with a Sun Crystal and a Dark Jade. (Old - Chalcedony + Dark Jade)

These are small changes, but for many Jewelcrafters they are welcome ones. On many servers due to the rising number of tanks, Chalcedony can be very difficult to come by on the auction house and relying on the random number generator can sometimes leave you high and dry when you are prospecting for specific gems. Lowering the amount of gems required for the Icy Prism makes it a tad bit easier for aspiring jewelers to obtain the various gems they may need to level their profession to the skill cap, as well as making it slightly more profitable when you manage to gain a good gem like a Cardinal Ruby or Dragon's Eye.

Just like Inscription having the material components reduced for many of it's recipes and the Titansteel cooldown being removed, I think we will continue to see this trend as Cataclysm approaches. Making it easier for players to hit their profession skill caps before the expansion drops is a very good way to get people ready for when the skill cap is raised again.

Upcoming battleground and honor changes

2010-02-19T02:52:00.000-08:00

Zarhym has announced today major upcoming battleground and honor changes. These changes will be present in the next minor content patch, which will be on the PTR soon. Some of the key points:

Marks of Honor are going away.

Holiday weekends will now be denoted as "Call to Arms" and award tiered system of honor for participation. The tier is based on you winning or losing the battleground, and if you've won or lost before.

Honor kills reward 100% more honor, Wintergrasp weekly quests give 50% less honor, and XP rewarded from honor kills are reduced by 50%.

Implementation of the Random Battleground Finder -- much like the current Random Dungeon Finder. There are further honor rewards, which are similar to the ones provided by the Call to Arms.

Obviously, there are a ton of implications in these changes to the basic way people participate in PvP. These changes also represent a good start to the massive overhaul we'll see in Cataclysm when rated battlegrounds are introduced.

The full statement after the break.

From Zarhym:

We have several changes planned for Battlegrounds in the next minor content patch and would like to share them with you now. This patch will be available for public testing and we encourage you to participate, queue up and provide some feedback on these changes.

Firstly, say goodbye to Battleground Marks of Honor. We feel this currency system is a bit outdated and are getting rid of it. Any items which require these marks as currency will have their costs adjusted appropriately to remove this requirement. The quest NPCs will still be available to award players Honor for turning in leftover marks, but this is only to help players clear this expired currency.

Next, the Battleground holiday weekend will now be denoted as "Call to Arms" in the Battleground tab and Calendar. If you prefer a specific Battleground over all others, look for those words next to its name to determine whether or not you'll receive bonus Honor. The bonus awards for Call to Arms Battlegrounds have been adjusted.
- Winning a Call to Arms Battleground for the first time in a day will award players with 30 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
- Additional Call to Arms Battleground victories after the first win for a player that day will award them with 15 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.
- Losing a Call to Arms Battleground will award players with 5 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.

To bring the rate at which players obtain PvP rewards with Honor more in-line with the rate at which players obtain PvE rewards via the Dungeon Finder, we'll also be increasing the amount of Honor awarded for an Honorable Kill by 100%. In light of this, the amount of experience provided from an Honorable Kill, and the amount of Honor awarded for completing the Wintergrasp weekly quests, have been reduced by 50%.

It's important to note one thing about these 50% decreases. All Honor awarded for completing objectives in Battlegrounds and Wintergrasp is actually based on an Honorable Kill conversion rate. So if you destroy a tower in Alterac Valley for example, the Honor you're awarded is actually based on a flat number of Honorable Kills. Since Honorable Kills will now award 100% more Honor, completing such objectives will also award more Honor. This is why experience gains based on completing Battleground objectives and Honor awarded from the Wintergrasp quests are being decreased by 50%.

Now that we hopefully have your attention, we're pleased to announce the implementation of the Random Battleground system! This system will work virtually the same as the Random Dungeon option in the Dungeon Finder. Players can queue with a group of up to five players for a Random Battleground in the Battleground tab. As with the Random Dungeon option, the Battleground chosen will not be revealed until players zone into the Battleground for which they are selected. The bonus rewards for this system are identical to the updated Call to Arms bonuses.

Winning a Battleground using the Random Battleground option for the first time in a day will award players with 30 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.

Winning additional Battlegrounds using the Random Battleground option after the first random win will award players with 15 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.

Losing a Battleground using the Random Battleground option will award players with 5 Honorable Kills worth of additional Honor currency.

When using the Random Battleground option, players will not receive additional rewards if the Battleground chosen is under the effects of the Call to Arms bonuses. In other words, the bonuses do not stack. In addition, if a player has been rewarded 30 Honorable Kills worth of bonus Honor currency from either the Random Battleground system, or the Call to Arms Battleground, he or she will be rewarded 15 Honorable Kills worth of bonus Honor currency that day for each additional victory. This applies whether the Random Battleground system is used, or the Call to Arms Battleground is chosen specifically, as a player cannot be rewarded the full amount of bonus Honor more than once per day.

Raid Rx: Healing through Professor Putricide

2010-02-19T02:47:00.000-08:00

The professor has a masters degree in potions and a Ph.D in raid wiping. Even the most stalwart of healers will have face a barrage of obstacles that will affect healing ability. This guy is my personal Achilles heel in Icecrown so far. Not more than a few days ago, I went an embarrassing 8 for 8 on Malleable Goo deaths. Talk about my pride being wounded. I'm supposed to be good at dodging stuff that comes flying toward me not running into them or getting drilled in the face by this green exploding goo.

Anyway, keep reading for my awesome mistakes and what I learned from them.

I'm assuming that if you're reading this, you have a basic understanding of the Professor Putricide encounter. This article is meant mainly for the healers.

Alright, on to phase 1!

Phase 1

Pick two tank healers to cover your tank on Professor Putricide. If one of them gets focused by a green slime or has to kite the orange cloud, at least you'll have one more for support. In any case, this early phase is a light one and there isn't a whole lot of healing that needs to be done. You can probably get away with five healers. If your DPS is jaw-droppingly amazing, take 6 with you instead.

Green slime

Get as far away as possible from where the Volatile Ooze is going to spawn (under the green faucet or tap thing). If you get targeted, you want to give your DPS players as much time as possible to blow it up before that mess even gets near you. Chances are though, it is going to get near you. With the exception of the tank healers, every healer needs to collapse onto the green slime target to help distribute the healing. Any melee DPS players should also be in range to distribute. This is the time to apply any mitigation spells (Power Word: Shield) or HoT spells like Wild Growth on the players that are about to make contact with it.

Pro tip: Try to position yourself so that when the green slime hits, it propels you in the direction of where Putricide is being kited to. You want to stand so that you are standing between the Professor and the slime as it hits the marked player.

Orange slime

Okay so it's more of a Gas Cloud (and not just any ordinary gas cloud) as opposed to a slime. Whatever you do, if you happen to be the player affected by Expunged Gas, do not run toward the Gas Cloud! Doing so leads to a wipe, an angry raid leader, and being the laughing stock of the raid for the next millennium. You do not want to be that guy.

It might be a smart move to assign a healer specifically dedicated to keeping the slime targets alive.

Remember, start off as far as possible away from the orange spawn (the green wall where the green slime spawns is a good choice as the orange slime spawns underneath the orange faucet). When it appears, wait a few seconds for it to come closer, then start running toward Putricide's potion table, kissing it, and then running along the orange wall. You don't have to actually kiss the table but you should run along the outer part as much as you can to kite it.

If you're the healer being targeted, load yourself up with HoTs like Renew and such. Don't stop for anything. Healing the Putricide tank? Alert your partner just in case.

Pro tip: If you think your raid can handle it, have the tank kite Putricide in a path parallel to the orange slime path. It does add a slight bit of extra damage to the boss due to incidental AoE damage from your players.

Phase 2

Congratulations for reaching the tear gas phase! Everything is exactly the same as phase 1 except there are a few additions. So keep avoiding the slimes and the gas clouds along with the other crap that takes place here.

Okay, so it isn't quite the tear gas phase but it has worn off now.

In addition to the green slime and orange slime running around duties, there are two extra things to watch out for.

Malleable Goo - You can refer to this as the Matticus-slayer. I am either too slow, unlucky, or just plain bad (probably variations of all 3). To clarify, it isn't the goo alone that manages to kill me. It is usually the goo plus some other thing. Although I'm the last person that should be advising you on this, here are some excellent defensive goo tactics.

Avoid the wall: Do not stand next to the wall when healing. If the goo comes your way, you will have zero chance at all whatsoever to survive.

Turn on all sounds, alarms, klaxons, and colors: You'll want to know when that goo hits. For some reason, I tend to tunnel vision a lot especially when I'm one of the tank healers. I found that when I was healing the raid overall, I had a much lower goo death rate.

Stand on the melee: I haven't yet tried this myself, but it seems to work in theory. The goo appears to target ranged players most of the time. So why not stand on the players who it will target the least, like the melee players? There is just one danger to this plan...

Choking Gas Bombs inflict Choking Gas to players around them. If you plan on staying with the melee, you better be able to keep up with them. Otherwise, these gas bomb explosions might detonate and wreck you.

This phase takes up most of the fight. As Putricide's health gradually closes in on the 35% mark, every healer should start moving toward his lab desk. This is where Putricide will go as phase 3 is entered. The tanks will be picking him up here and it is absolutely crucial that healers are within range.

Phase 3

When you position yourselves, it is important that you not stand where the tank needs to kite Putricide to. The Professor is going to continually spawn acid pools and it is crucial to not be standing in a spot where the tank needs to kite him to.

He hits like a freight train. Damage and attack speed is increased by 50% courtesy of Mutated Strength. Keep him focused and pay strict attention to your target of target frames. Your tanks will be rotating every so often to distribute his Mutated Plague debuff. Keep your cooldowns ready. Ideally, your tanks will use their cooldowns when they taunt to pick up Putricide. Overlap yours after a few seconds to give yourself a stronger chance of survival.

Unfortunately, there isn't much else you can do here as it is a fairly straight forward burn phase. The success is going to rest on the abilities and DPS output of your raid. Hold the line!

Icecrown Citadel normal modes no longer limited by attempts

2010-02-09T06:51:00.000-08:00

Far earlier than any of us had expected, Daelo has announced that the normal modes of Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King will no longer have limited attempts. The heroic modes of these encounters will still have limited attempts, however. To quote:

After each region's maintenance this week, raids will no longer lose attempts on wipes in Normal mode for Professor Putricide, Blood-Queen Lana'thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. There will still be limited attempts in Heroic mode.

We will continue to monitor developments in Icecrown Citadel in the future, especially since the Heroic difficulty has been unlocked by a significant number of raids.

A very interesting development, and I'm curious why they decided to lift the attempts system from normal modes entirely. Is it due to a relatively low number of guilds actually killing these bosses right now, or is there some other reason?

Clarification on normal mode functionality

2010-02-09T06:50:00.000-08:00

Over on the EU forums, Slorkuz has clarified a few questions players may have about the new changes coming to normal mode ICC, namely the removal of limited attempts from the final bosses in each wing. While limited attempts will still be in place on heroic mode, they will no longer be in effect on normal mode as of the end of maintenance this morning. To quote:

Q: If you extend your raid lockout this week, will you still lose attempts on Normal after the hotfix?

A: No.

Q: If you run completely out of attempts on Heroic, will the wing bosses and Lich King no longer respawn, even if the difficulty is switched to Normal?

A: YES. So leave an attempt left if you wish to kill them on Normal. We'll try and correct this in a future update.

Q: Why is the counter still visible in Normal?

A: The hotfix being applied just stops the counter decrementing, and nothing more.

In other words, raiders attempting the final bosses of these wings on normal difficulty will still see the counter, it simply won't count down if they wipe. More importantly however is the news that players wishing to attempt bosses on Heroic difficulty will need to leave one attempt up if they want to clear the boss on normal mode.

Phat Loot Phriday: Trauma

2010-02-06T18:21:00.000-08:00

Yo dawg. Blizz heard you like heals, so they put a heal on your heal so you can heal while you heal. Was that a traumatic sentence to read? Sorry, couldn't help it, but I'll claim that I dropped that meme in honor of today's Phat Loot Phriday weapon: Trauma. Not only are the stats on this one-handed mace pretty sexy, but it was the beneficiary of a recent fix. (The heal it procs was only affecting folks in the same group as the person who received the heal, not anyone else in the raid.)

Also? It's totally a bunch of skulls with horns lashed together.

While the thread in which Ghostcrawler posted derailed into general discussion about Blizzard's QA, let's not allow that kind of tangent-hopping to happen here! Without further ado, Trauma:

Name: Trauma

Type: Main Hand Mace

Damage: 112 - 359 Damage, 130.9 damage per second

Speed: 1.80

Attritbutes:

53 Stamina

53 Intellect

Increases spell power by 741.

Each time your spells heal a target you have a chance to cause the target of your heal to heal themselves and friends within 10 yards for 217 each sec for 6 sec.

Of course, now that we're seeing Arthas go down, we'll see the Heroic version of Trauma soon enough:

Name: Trauma (Heroic)

Type: Main Hand Mace

Damage: 142 - 414 Damage, 154.4 damage per second

Speed: 1.80

Attributes:

48 Stamina

52 Intellect

Has one Yellow Socket

Increases spell power by 836.

Each time your spells heal a target you have a chance to cause the target of your heal to heal themselves and friends within 10 yards for 245 each sec for 6 sec.

Yeah, if you're noticing that the Stamina and Intellect are slightly less in Heroic and in the normal version, you're not insane. That's what the tooltips actually say. I guess the itemization points for all that spell power, the awesome heals, and a yellow socket have to come from somewhere.

The proc does trigger from HoTs. It has about a 1% percent chance to proc, and shows up in combat logs and parses as Fountain of Light. It only heals up to five people, but before the bug fix, they would all have to be in the same party. Now, you just need to be "friends" and within the range. ("Friends" presumably means within the same raid.)

Even though the healing seems low, we'll see if Trauma doesn't get a little more popular with the fix now in place. Dropping an additional "free" heal as raid healing could be greatly helpful, especially since it's not like the rest of the stats on this mace are bad. (Okay, it's damage per second is pretty poor, but if you're trying to use this as a melee weapon, you have other problems.)

How to Get It: The long version is to not stand in slime, kite oozes, dodge vomit, and do more not-standing-in-slime. The short version is that Trauma drops from Rotface. At a 28% drop chance, you're bound to see it eventually.

(Note that "you're bound to see it" does not guarantee a drop. I do not have that power, or I'd finally be riding my dang Deathcharger.)

Getting rid of it: It sells for 27 gold, and presumably breaks into an Abyss Crystal. Other options include clicking on the item, clicking in mid air and choosing "Delete." Then, confirm your choice by typing Delete into the text box that appears. You should at least go for the gold, though.

Really, the proc is likely to be useful for a very long time, if you fast-cast enough instant heals that you're seeing it pop up regularly. It's a nice bolster to raid healing, but probably not enough to keep it in your inventory forever.

Daelo and Ghostcrawler discuss the Lich King

2010-02-04T03:02:00.000-08:00

The latest edition of Blizzard Insider, Blizzard's very sporadic email newsletter (and no relation to our old name, WoW Insider) has been released. Issue 32 features a note that the Starcraft II: WIngs of Liberty site has been revamped, blurbs about the mobile Authenticator and the Armory app, and some calls to buy their merchandise.

More interesting for WoW fans, though, is an interview with Scott Mercer (Daelo), WoW's lead encounter designer, and Greg Street (Ghostcrawler), a crab who needs no introduction. They discussed the arc of Arthas and the Lich King from Warcraft II through World of Warcraft (congratulations again to Blood Legion on their 10-man world-first).

Please note that here there be spoilers for some details about the Arthas fight, so stay away if you want it all to be a surprise.

The interview is fairly short, and a nice read if you have a few minutes. Here are my summary notes, though:

In Warcraft III, a big part of Arthas's role (design-wise) was to be the bridge between the human and undead campaigns. However, they didn't always know how big a deal he was going to be in the ongoing story of the Warcraft universe.

If you were around for the beginning of Wrath, you likely remember the developers talking about how they wanted Arthas to be a very real, direct presence for all players in this expansion, as opposed to Illidan's remoteness in Burning Crusade. Well, apparently they think it "worked very well," and "will likely adopt this approach for other villains in the future." I have mixed feelings about it myself -- I think it slightly cheapens the villian to have him running around in half the instances in the game. Overall I like it this way better than the BC way, but they could tone it down a bit.

One of the interesting things about the Icecrown Citadel raid is that the bosses all have a reason to be there. They're not just standing around. "Putricide heads up R&D" for the lich king, and so on.

I'm sure this information is out there for the finding right now, but apparently the Lich King fight takes place at the Frozen Throne at the very top of Icecrown, and falling off the tower is "a real danger." Also, Frostmourne is "a core mechanic of the fight itself."

The story behind the Lich King's big sack o' weapons: "The main idea is that the Lich King has an inventory of weapons that he has stolen and corrupted throughout his reign. These weapons originally belonged to characters like King Terenas, Antonidas, Sylvanas, and Muradin Bronzebeard." Awesome.

And finally, the devs tell us that the in-game event that kicks off Cataclysm will be "at least as big as the zombie invasion that kicked off the Wrath of the Lich King." I can't wait!

WoW Saronite Bombs and similar items disabled

2010-02-04T03:00:00.000-08:00

We do not know whether or not this was used in the Lich King kills we've seen so far (Ensidia's kill screenshot suggests they did), but Daelo hit the European forums to make the announcement that they've temporarily disabled Saronite Bombs and the Global Thermal Sapper Charge. What does this have to do with the Lich King? Well, Daelo says...

We just made a hotfix that disables the siege damage dealt by Saronite Bombs and the Global Thermal Sapper Charge. The siege damage of the bombs was causing the Frozen Throne platform to rebuild, which greatly decreases the difficulty of the encounter.

We'll reenable the siege damage in a later update when the issue with the Frozen Throne is fixed.

It is a longstanding tradition for end bosses to be exploited in the most hilariously awful of ways, so seeing something like this isn't all that surprising. Here's hoping nothing else like it crops up.

Update: Ensidia has released a statement regarding their use of this bug.

Wow Ice cold spoilers edition

2010-02-02T03:22:00.000-08:00

We're getting the long awaited Patch 3.3.2, and with it, season 8, some nice little class changes, and of course, Arthas. We've already seen a leak of the promised final cinematic that occurs after the Lich King battle. Don't click on the link if you don't want to see it, it's a pretty big spoiler.

Of course, a new patch means a lot of downtime. So, While you're waiting through the 3 AM to 11 AM Pacific downtime for the servers to come up and the patch to download, have a serving of some of the hottest news and best articles from the past 7 days, and be sure to stay tuned for lots more Patch 3.3.2 news in the coming days.

Hot News and Features

Vol'jin clarifies what you should do with the voodoo in last week's Ask A Faction Leader.

Patch 3.3.2 brings a new Ashen Verdict strength ring for plate melee classes. Check out the stats.

Patch 3.3.2 also brings some updated states to tier 10 plate tank armor, and we have more details for those as well.

Patch 3.3.2 brings with it a new mount for raiders: Invincible, steed of Arthas.

Patch 3.3.2 is also the start of a new arena season. Check out the look of the new season 8 gear.

Ghostcrawler recently offered some insight into Blizzard's talent redesign philosophies for Cataclysm.

Ever wanted to show off your WoW characters to your Mafia Wars family? Blizzard now has an official facebook armory app.

Class News and Guides

Shifting Perspectives helps your tree be all it can be with a Restoration 101 guide.

Lichborne looks at Plagueworks loot for death knights. Also, Ghostcrawler confirms that yes, death knights are a melee class.

Totem Talk has gearing help for the fresh level 80 elemental shaman.

Encrypted Text has more roguely advice for raiding Icecrown Citadel.

Pimp My Profile offers help to a protection warrior. We also released a protection 101 guide for warrior tanks.

Spiritual Guidance wonders if the Hybrid Tax is too high for a shadow priest. We also have a look at discipline and holy gear from ICC-25 and a look at food, flasks, and potions for priest healers.

Scattered Shots discusses hunter strategy for Plagueworks.

The Light and How to Swing it looks at Crimson Halls loot for paladins. We also have a holy 101 guide for new paladin healers.

Arcane Brilliance has an arcane 101 guide for mages.

Blood Pact has a guide to using SimulationCraft to gear up your warlock.

We discuss gearing up your tank.

Items, Dungeons, PvP, Professions, and More

Blizzard recently offered a behind the scenes look at the making of the Gunship Battle.

Ready Check takes on Rotface.

Raid Rx says: Billy, don't be a hero.

Blizzard wants you to work hard for your trinkets, at least for now.

Cataclysm is coming, and with it, reasons to make sure you're wearing class-appropriate gear.

WoW Rookie offers fresh instancing tips for new level 80s.

The Overachiever looks at dungeon and raid titles.

Insider Trader checks out the most popular crafted gear on the armory.

Odds and Ends

Check out the latest issue of Byron the Tauren Rogue!

To joy of some and the sorrow of others, the night elf mohawk is gone, at least for now.

WoW.com continues to welcome new columnists to our fold. This time, we have a new Lore columnist. We also have the first issue of our new Lawbringer column, which covers legal issues related to the World of Warcraft.

Blizzard recently launched a battle.net account security page.