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

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.

Blizzard launches Facebook Armory app

Earlier this evening we received a tip (thanks, Taylor) that Blizzard has launched a WoW Armory Facebook application. It promises to publish data about your WoW characters to all your Facebook buddies in real time. I figured I'd give it a spin, not so much because I want to spam my friends with it as because I'm curious what they've come up with.

You can see the results in the gallery below. Here are my brief impressions:

• It's a bit scary that it asks you to log in with your Battle.net account, but if you look at the URL of the popup window it is in fact from us.battle.net, one of the legitimate domains. Still, I'm not sure it's good training for users for Blizzard to ask us to log in within random popups.


• The login form does not ask for your authenticator.


• It doesn't tell you this in the brief description, but you choose up to five characters for the app to report to your followers. It doesn't just indiscriminately report the progress of your latest bank alt.


• By default, it publishes updates on your characters to your Facebook feed, but that box is easily unchecked (fortunately).


• It also by default posts to your feed that you've installed the app, which is something I can't forgive a Facebook (or Twitter) developer for. If I really want to tell all my friends I'm using your app, I'll tell them. Don't do it for me. At least this too is an option that can be unchecked.

After choosing your characters and what you want to show, you may be worried that it's not working, but just give it a minute - it doesn't populate immediately. Mine started showing data in about ten minutes.

Overall, assuming they manage to make it work, if you want your Facebook friends to know about your WoW characters, this is the app for you. If not, why are you still reading this post? Anyway, I'm glad to see Blizzard following through on some of the promise the Armory has always showed, even if I don't approve of all their methods. Innovation is always welcome.

WoW FigurePrints price reduction, armor sets available

Our friends over at FigurePrints have a few pieces of news to share this weekend: first of all, they've dropped the price in the EU from €129.95 (which was about $166) to €99.95, which lines up with the US price of $129.95. The reason given for the original higher price was exchange rates, but they now say things have settled down enough where they can line up the prices. No word on if EU people who ordered them at the higher price will be getting a refund, so I'd assume they won't.

Also, they have now implemented the Tier armor sets we were told about in our interview at BlizzCon -- instead of ordering a FigurePrint with your usual gear on it, you can instead choose to dress your character in Tier 1, 2, or 3, dungeon set 1 or 2, or the original PvP Rare or Epic armor sets. That's designed so that characters don't have to go back and collect all of those pieces -- if you'd rather remember your character in that original armor from the vanilla game, there you go.

And finally, everyone who purchases a FigurePrint before November 10th will be entered in a sweepstakes to win a Magic Rooster TCG card that you can exchange for an in-game rooster mount. Probably not enough to make you get a FigurePrint out of the blue (there are, of course, other ways to win those cards), but if you've been planning on picking one up anyway, it could be a nice bonus.

2v2 team hits 3206 team rating, 3585 personal rating

A 2v2 team on US-Ruin has somehow achieved an unheard-of 3206 team rating. Paper Cut Your Eyelids' team leader is Cäke, a Blood Elf Priest in three-piece Deadly, one-piece Furious Gladiator gear. His Orc partner, Kwamo, a nearly full Furious Assassination Rogue, has somehow amassed a 3585 personal rating on the curiously successful team. This is pretty amazing when you consider the highest 2v2 team last season was rated below 3000.

Red flags are going up over this one, folks.

The team has a strangely unimpressive win ratio of 82-71. If each of their losses brought the team down 0 points, (which we know is untrue from their match history), each of their wins would average out to slightly greater than ~39 points per win. As they are nearly 400 team rating above the next highest team on the battlegroup, one would assume their gains would decrease dramatically the higher they ascend.


Moreover, the team's match history is incredibly weird. Before the team's ridiculously large -938 point loss (at 1220 rating), their match history seems to be perfectly normal. As they ascend the ladder, their winning gains gradually decrease from 47 to the mid 30s. Losses count 0 against them (this is normal), as their match making rating ("MMR") is presumed to be greater than 1200.

The -938 point loss is where things start getting fun.

The armory recording a large point gain or loss "between games," or "in one game," is not necessarily rare. Sometimes, during armory updates, the match history doesn't keep track of games. If a team plays a lot of games in that period, the system will sometimes record teams as going +200 points with no real recollection of how they got there.

So, not necessarily a big deal there... except they went down 938 points from 1220 to 282. To go down that low means your MMR has to be sub-282. Attaining an MMR of those ridiculously low proportions would entail lots and lots of defeat, on purpose, to exceptionally poorly-rated teams. The time this would take would be staggering.

Of course, this wouldn't make much sense either, as a win is registered as giving the team +47 points. To gain 47 points, your match making rating has to be vastly above your team rating. Players who have an MMR of 800 are still vastly above 0, which explains why even they get 47 point wins when starting a new team.

Now, let's take a look at their losses: You would assume that for 47 points won, they would lose 0 points on a loss. Not so. They actually lose 47 points as well, giving them that very weird two point line effect that you see during the second half of their match history. They bounce from 282 to 329 and back many, many times, ending at 329 although the armory has them recorded at 3209. No, Office Space fans, I doubt this is a decimal error.

The mystery doesn't stop there, however: the games themselves are odd.

In most of the team's peculiar wins, Cäke was 1v2ing and got 1 killing blow. Cäke's rogue partner, Kwamo, was nowhere to be found in most of these games. If he entered the arena but disconnected previous to combat initiating, the Armory would show the rogue on game history with 0 damage done, 0 damage received, etc. -- but none of that appears. Virtually all of the teams are different, so it is extremely unlikely that win trading is going on, but something obviously isn't right.

Regardless of what's going on here, it will be interesting to see what happens.

Update: Armory has updated to show the team has played a few more games, and is now rated 2677 with a record of 95-94. Kwamo's personal rating is 3056, down from the 3585 armory had him at earlier.

2v2 team hits 3206 team rating, 3585 personal rating

A 2v2 team on US-Ruin has somehow achieved an unheard-of 3206 team rating. Paper Cut Your Eyelids' team leader is Cäke, a Blood Elf Priest in three-piece Deadly, one-piece Furious Gladiator gear. His Orc partner, Kwamo, a nearly full Furious Assassination Rogue, has somehow amassed a 3585 personal rating on the curiously successful team. This is pretty amazing when you consider the highest 2v2 team last season was rated below 3000.

Red flags are going up over this one, folks.

The team has a strangely unimpressive win ratio of 82-71. If each of their losses brought the team down 0 points, (which we know is untrue from their match history), each of their wins would average out to slightly greater than ~39 points per win. As they are nearly 400 team rating above the next highest team on the battlegroup, one would assume their gains would decrease dramatically the higher they ascend.


Moreover, the team's match history is incredibly weird. Before the team's ridiculously large -938 point loss (at 1220 rating), their match history seems to be perfectly normal. As they ascend the ladder, their winning gains gradually decrease from 47 to the mid 30s. Losses count 0 against them (this is normal), as their match making rating ("MMR") is presumed to be greater than 1200.

The -938 point loss is where things start getting fun.

The armory recording a large point gain or loss "between games," or "in one game," is not necessarily rare. Sometimes, during armory updates, the match history doesn't keep track of games. If a team plays a lot of games in that period, the system will sometimes record teams as going +200 points with no real recollection of how they got there.

So, not necessarily a big deal there... except they went down 938 points from 1220 to 282. To go down that low means your MMR has to be sub-282. Attaining an MMR of those ridiculously low proportions would entail lots and lots of defeat, on purpose, to exceptionally poorly-rated teams. The time this would take would be staggering.

Of course, this wouldn't make much sense either, as a win is registered as giving the team +47 points. To gain 47 points, your match making rating has to be vastly above your team rating. Players who have an MMR of 800 are still vastly above 0, which explains why even they get 47 point wins when starting a new team.

Now, let's take a look at their losses: You would assume that for 47 points won, they would lose 0 points on a loss. Not so. They actually lose 47 points as well, giving them that very weird two point line effect that you see during the second half of their match history. They bounce from 282 to 329 and back many, many times, ending at 329 although the armory has them recorded at 3209. No, Office Space fans, I doubt this is a decimal error.

The mystery doesn't stop there, however: the games themselves are odd.

In most of the team's peculiar wins, Cäke was 1v2ing and got 1 killing blow. Cäke's rogue partner, Kwamo, was nowhere to be found in most of these games. If he entered the arena but disconnected previous to combat initiating, the Armory would show the rogue on game history with 0 damage done, 0 damage received, etc. -- but none of that appears. Virtually all of the teams are different, so it is extremely unlikely that win trading is going on, but something obviously isn't right.

Regardless of what's going on here, it will be interesting to see what happens.

Update: Armory has updated to show the team has played a few more games, and is now rated 2677 with a record of 95-94. Kwamo's personal rating is 3056, down from the 3585 armory had him at earlier.

Armor penetration being nerfed in 3.2.2

Ghostcrawler has announced that armor penetration (ArP) is being nerfed in the upcoming Patch 3.2.2. It's an early notice to players who plan on investing in armor penetration gems. Many raiding melee players (along with Marksman hunters apparently) have begun focusing exclusively on armor penetration without caring about other stats. While the mechanics of ArP can be complicated to understand, the basic understanding is the more ArP you have the more damage you deal. Heck, a Feral Druid in my guild has been known to pass on upgrades here and there primarily because it lacked ArP.

Again, this is mainly a nerf to PvE raiding but it could end up affecting PvP slightly as well. It's not expected to completely rock the arena world or anything. The worst thing that could happen is Priests (or other soft targets) like myself will survive a few seconds longer against melee heavy teams, or people like Rogues have it worse against Plate. I guess from my perspective it could be viewed as a buff!

Note that in Cataclysm, armor penetration will be removed as a stat as it has been deemed confusing in regards to its use.

Armour Penetration Nerfed for 3.2.2

In the latest build of WoW 3.2.2 on the PTR, it seems that Armour Penetration, after only recently being buffed to 125% has been nerfed to 110%. I went to the forums to see if I could find anything, and of course our lovely crab friend Ghostcrawler shed some light on the matter.

The nerf to armor pen in 3.2.2 is intentional. Compared to the recent buff where we increased the value of armor rating to 125%, this nerf would take it back down to 110%. While we are still evaluating the effects of this change in the 3.2.2 build, we did want to let you know of the possibility in case you were about to spend a lot on armor pen gems.

In fact, this was really the point. Several melee specs (and Marksman hunters) had begun to focus on armor pen at the expense of all other stats. Gear without armor pen was being passed over and gem sockets were increasingly being filled with just this one stat. While every spec has stats that are more valuable than others, this one felt like it was starting to trump everything. Not coincidentally, characters stacking lots of armor pen were starting to do more damage than their peers and more damage than we were comfortable with.

This change is largely for PvE reasons, though we won't cry at all if melee damage in PvP drops a little as a result.

We're letting you know now so that this doesn't feel like a stealth nerf, assuming it goes live. While you might disagree or be frustrated by the change (though I also suspect it won't come as a surprise to many players), we ask that you try and keep your response to something appropriate for these forums.

As a warrior I don't see this as a huge nerf, especially as I don't ArP stack at all, in fact I prefer to rely on pure AP and crit for my damage. However some people (Marksman Hunters and Arms Warriors for example) have done the ArP stack and are, well, let's just say "not too happy"

GC then followed up with this post.

There is rarely an ideal time to announce a nerf. In the case of e.g. the Prot paladin healing nerf, we had already decided we were going to fix it and how we were going to fix it so we announced it relatively early. The armor pen decision included more debate. I am sorry if the timing was bad for any of you personally, but we certainly can't promise that future nerfs or buffs won't necessitate gear changes.

I wouldn't focus too much on the issue of using too many of the same kind of gem. There are plenty of situations where that has been the case since BC (though it's not ideal in a perfect world). Rather the case was that classes that had been using Agi or Str or whatever were now switching almost exclusively to armor pen and being greatly rewarded for it. Gear without armor pen was being passed over. Specs that benefited a lot from armor pen were outstripping specs in the same class. As many other players have concluded, it was just too good.

That said, we don't think it will be a trash stat if we make this change. If you could beat plate-wearers in PvP before we don't think that will suddenly flip overnight. We don't think you'll feel the need to shard your items with armor pen.

We also think the change is good for both PvE and PvP. My earlier comment was to try and discourage players from thinking their PvE got nerfed for PvP reasons, though that absolutely happens sometimes when we can't avoid it. Some players have been concerned about the power of melee classes in Arenas. While this change alone isn't likely to sway their opinions, chilling out melee damage in PvP probably isn't a bad thing.

Yes, armor pen is gone in Cataclysm, at least as a rating on gear. Until then we want it to be a good stat but not one that trumps every other gear consideration.

I for one welcome the changes to the World of Warcraft and see this change as a change for the future, at least until Armour Penetration is removed.

Mining the armory for Hunter pet statistics

With Hunter pet information recently added to the armory, Data Miner Zardoz has wasted no time getting his hands on the raw Hunter pet data and breaking it down. The data is only for level 80 Hunters, and only 10,000 of those at that, but it still gives a very interesting snapshot of what's going with the Hunter's best friends.

It might not be too big a surprise that Cats are far and away the most popular pet at a count of around 9500, nearly doubling again the amount of Wolves, who come in just under 5000, which are in turn used in numbers over twice as much as the next popular choice, Gorillas, who are just above 2800 in number. Now mind you, this information does take into account pets that are in the stables as well, and there's certainly the possibility that a lot of them have just stayed in the stables for a long time.

Still, it's sort of crazy to see a handful of pets blow away all comers. If Cats and Wolves seem to insurmountably blow them all away, is it is a sign of overpoweredness, or just a sign that no matter what new skins and pet families you implement, people will always return to their old favorites? Or does it just mean that a bunch of old Hunters used Cats and Wolves back when they were one of a handful of pets available and just stuck them in a stable for old times sake rather than abandon them? One also wonders how Scorpids and Ravagers got so unpopular so fast. They used to dominate in Burning Crusade. Are we so fickle as Hunters that we just wanted to abandon their ugly faces as soon as we didn't need them?

Then there's the other question: Do the poor pet types at the bottom of the barrel deserve buffs, or are they a lost cause? Does Blizzard even care much about pet "skin" balancing, or do they just assume that no-one loves those ugly Sporebats? We do know they care about pet appearance to some degree, though, thanks to the Worgen debacle and the older slime debacle and the even older Ghost Wolf debacle.

Speaking of Slimes (and Hydras), Zardoz's data on the percentage of pets also includes a listing of what specific pet mobs are the most tamed for each family. For Crocolisks, it looks like far and away it's the now hot fixed to be untameable Hydra and Slime from the quest A Cleansing Song. Again, a lot of these "Crocolisks" are probably hidden away in stables now, but it at least suggests that people like awesome pet looks. You can see this in action with Boars as well, with the Rotting Ama'gar holding a commanding lead over all other comers, and even with the very popular wolves, where the demonic-looking Vargul Blighthound leads the pack.

Of course, other pet types, such as Hyenas and Cats, you'll actually find that the most popular pet mobs are the most high leveled ones. You'd think this would be less of a problem in the modern WoW game, since your pets automatically level to within 5 levels of you anyway when you first tame them, but it seems like people still like to take every slight advantage they can get.

One more interesting thing Zardoz points out is that just under half the pets in his sample have no spent talent points. Now, again, it could be these are just old pets in the stable that haven't been pulled out and talented ever, but there's also that whole weird thing where pets seem to lose their talents when their Hunter switches specs and all that gets a bit annoying. Maybe this kind of statistic will convince Blizzard they need to check into hammering out that pet spec switching stuff, though.

It's probably not completely safe to say too much about this data. It's pretty raw, and doesn't cover frequency of use or style of play for each pet, so we don't want to jump to conclusions too quickly, but at the least it should be fun to check it out and see how popular (or unique) your favorite pet really is.

WoW Armory for the iPhone released

Blizzard has just released an official WoW Armory client for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The App features the ability for users to see a number of important things on their iPhone that they normally would be able to get in-game or through use of the official armory site. Some of the major features include:

Character information, including gear, achievements, and specs
PvP leader boards Talent calculators Official Blizzard news An integrated item browser In-game calendars You can download the app right now from the WoW Armory page and the App Store. The app is free. This is the second mobile application Blizzard has developed, the first being a mobile authenticator app.

Some first impressions of the app after the break!