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With the release of upcoming content patch players will see a change in the way we allow buffs and debuffs to stack exclusively in a raid. For the most part, what this change means is that many buffs and debuffs that were previously allowed to stack together no longer can, and that many buffs and debuffs that only a single talent specialization could bring can now be brought by multiple different specializations. The philosophy behind this change shows up in many of the changes we have made in Wrath of The Lich King, such as when we made almost all buffs raid-wide. We want players to be able to form raids and parties based on who they want to play with, rather than who has the correct talents and abilities to min-max their raid performance.

Raid composition will still matter to some extent, but without this change, it would have overwhelmed every other aspect of raid planning (as we added new capabilities to each of 30 different talent trees). You no longer need to rigidly control the melee/spellcaster balance of your raid, or make sure every group has all the critical buffing classes, etc. This change has many class balance implications.

IMPORTANT! Before we are done, we will thoroughly test the performance of every class. It should not be assumed that one class’ current performance relative to others in beta is final. Some classes (and specializations) will need to be reduced in power and some increased. Many may feel the change has more impact on class X than class Y. We will address all of those concerns via our internal testing and community feedback.

There are thirty or so different categories into which buffs and debuffs fit. Here you will find a comprehensive list of the changes made broken down by category and which spells/talents are in that category.

• Armor Debuff (Major): Acid Spit (exotic Hunter pet), Expose Armor, Sunder Armor
• Armor Debuff (Minor): Faerie Fire, Sting (Hunter pet), Curse of Recklessness
• 
  continue reading "WotLK - *Brand New* Debuff / Buff Synergy and Stacking"
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This week with the new build some really good Leatherworker-Only item enchantments were released.

The enchantments are as follows:

• Fur Lining - Attack Power — Permanently enchant bracers to increase attack power by 120.  Can only be used on the leatherworker’s bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.
• Fur Lining - Stamina — Permanently enchant bracers to increase stamina by 90. Can only be used on the leatherworker’s bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.
• Fur Lining - Spell Damage — Permanently enchant bracers to increase spell power by 70. Can only be used on the leatherworker’s bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.
• Fur Lining - Fire Resist — Permanently enchant bracers to increase your fire resistance by 60. Can only be used on the leatherworker’s bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.
• Fur Lining - Frost Resist — Permanently enchant bracers to increase your frost resistance by 60. Can only be used on the leatherworker’s bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.
• Fur Lining - Shadow Resist — Permanently enchant bracers to increase your shadow resistance by 60. Can only be used on the leatherworker’s bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.
• Fur Lining - Nature Resist — Permanently enchant bracers to increase your nature resistance by 60. Can only be used on the leatherworker’s bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.
• Fur Lining - Arcane Resist — Permanently enchant bracers to increase your arcane resistance by 60. Can only be used on the leatherworker’s bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.

Here is a post by Blizzard poster Gamnin on upcoming Warrior changes that will be launched with the next beta build.

————————————————-

Hello Warriors,

I’ve got a sneak preview of things coming up in the beta for you to discuss. We still have lots of polish and bug fixing to do and we’re still wrestling with a few elements of the warrior abilities and talents so do not consider this an exhaustive list. As always, post any concerns or suggestions you have.

General

• Enraged Assault redesigned, now Enraged Regeneration: You regenerate 30% of your total health over 10 sec. This ability consumes all Enrage effects and prevents any from affecting you for the full duration. Must be enraged to use. Cost 15 rage, 3 min cooldown.
• Slam – We’re working to change this ability to suspend the swing timer when you are using the ability. In other words, if you’re .5 sec away from swinging your weapon when you start using Slam you’ll be .5 sec from swinging your weapon after Slam goes off.

Arms

• Improved Charge now generates 5/10 rage.
• Mace Specialization now ignores 3/6/9/12/15% of target’s armor.
• Sudden Death and Trauma swapped locations.
• Bladestorm now lasts 6 seconds, causing a whirlwind every second.

continue reading "WotLK - Upcoming Warrior Class Changes"

Post by the Blizzard Poster Gamnin on upcoming rogue changes that will be in the next WotLK Beta Build.

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Here’s a quick update on some additional changes we’ve made over the weekend. Most of these, but not all, will be in the next beta build.

General

• Cloak of Shadows cooldown changed to 1.5 min.
• Disarm Trap range increased to 20 yds, cast time reduced to 1 sec, now requires stealth.
• (NEW – Level 75) Tricks of the Trade: The current party or raid member becomes the target of your Tricks of the Trade. The threat caused by your next attack and all actions taken for 6 sec afterwards will be transferred to the target. In addition, all damage caused by the target is increased by 15% during this time. 30 sec cooldown. (Surprise! Yes, this is the new group/raid utility ability. We haven’t put any stacking protection on it yet but we’ll need one type of solution or other to prevent the need for 5 rogue Trick rotations. Note also that you cannot use this ability on yourself.)

continue reading "WotLK - Upcoming Rogue Class Make-over"

I posted an entry a little while back about running 5 mans with the Death Knight in the Outland. While 5 DK’s in Ramparts or Blood Furnace is a rip-roaring kill fest, my impression of them has changed somewhat in the Northrend instances. I decided to switch over to playing my druid “Spugnort” for a while as a resto spec in the 2 entry-level instances for Northrend. First I ran Utgarde Keep and then Nexus. In both occasions, having a Death Knight in the party has made me cringe as the healer. They still dish tons of damage, which translates into tons of threat. I’m not sure if it is just that people haven’t figured out how to play the DK effectively or maybe I was just running with some knuckleheads, but I *REALLY* don’t like trying to keep DK’s alive.

The DK seems to take 2-3x the damage of a Bear or Warrior tank and typically have far fewer hitpoints. I know that Blizzard has stated that the DK is going to be a viable tanking class, but so far, as a healer I have more DK deaths than I do Warlock or Mage during 5 man instance runs. They generate tons of threat, have no aggro clearing capabilities and very little health in comparison to some of the other tanking classes. In most cases, once a DK has pulled aggro, they will be dead on the floor in less time than it takes me to wind up a healing touch. As such, I won’t currently run any 5 mans with a DK as the tank - only as DPS.

I’m sure I’ll catch some heat for this view of the Death Knight as I am sure there are some of you out there that may have mastered the class. I have seen the YouTube videos of DK’s performing well - but that seems to currently be the exception rather than the rule.

Hopefully, it will just take some additional tweaking and a little more player practice to make the DK’s a fun class to have around. For now, however, I will continue to cringe each time one joins my party in Northrend.

GENERAL

Several client crash and assertion error causes were addressed.

The Noble Villas have been optimized. Some players should experience a noticeable increase in performance.

Shield of the Risen will now be given to new characters when they reach level 5.

Facial expressions have been added to a number of emotes.

Female characters can now use the “pointdown” emote.

The following emotes now work for both male and female characters:
cheer, excitedclap, excited (formerly jig_f), flirt, hugefish, lightheaded, pushaway, trance.

Players will now use the crawl animation when sprinting while swimming.

CLASSES

You may now have up to two Team Heal effects (Renewal, Healing Lotus, Emanation of Life, and Martyrdom) running simultaneously.

Priest (General)

Vindicator will now properly affect Soldiers who joined a group in Defensive Stance.

Rogue (General)

Quick Dismount will no longer go on cooldown if used while moving.

Quick Dismount will now work even with weapons drawn.

Using Quick Dismount while riding a mammoth or a rhino will now result in an actual dismount, rather than just an ability cooldown

Assassin

Assassination (2) buff will now properly appear in the Buff GUI instead of the debuff GUI.

All Assassin combo damage and stamina costs have been rebalanced to match some newly adjusted animations.

From the Darkness and Ambush should now occur correctly, when performed from stealth.

Barbarian

Cyclone of Steel II is now usable only with the correct weapon type.

Ambidextrous will now increase off-hand chance by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10% per respective rank.

Conqueror

Rend Flesh’s bleed effect will now stack in the proper order.

Changed the name of the feat ‘Improved Wrath’ to ‘Improved Fire Weave.’

Changed the name of the feat ‘Lingering Wrath’ to ‘Lingering Fire Weave.’

Changed the name of the feat ‘Skirmisher’ to ‘Fleet of Foot.’

Dark Templar

Invulnerable Soul now increases the amount of damage absorbed by Covenant of Invulnerability by 2/4/6/8/10 points per respective rank.

Demonologist

Fires of Gehenna will now have a 1 second cooldown applied to it after using Greater Flames.

Chaotic Blast’s damage component can now perform critical hits.

Guardian

The Defiance heal effect will now use the proper icon in the buff GUI.

Impale combo now has a squelchy fleshy sound when used.

Herald of Xotli

Tweaked the animation played for Pillar of Infernal Flame.

Burn to Death I, Molten Steel Slash I, Pillar of Infernal Flame I now have new icons.

The duration of the Flame Tongue buff has been increased from 8 seconds to 10 seconds.

Necromancer

Blasphemy’s cast time has been reduced to 2 seconds.

Touch of Winter will no longer overwrite Ice Shackle’s snare effect.

Priest of Mitra

Empowered Repulse should also increase the length of the knockbacks by 1 meter for each point.

Holy Conquest’s bonus holy damage on the Devotional Prayer spell will now properly affect teammates.

Channeling spells now use correct amount of mana per tick. Players should no longer be able to cancel spells early and recast them for a reduced mana cost.

Ranger

Cripple and Cripple Enemies now have new icons.

Flesh Ripper and Piercing Shot IV now have new icons.

Leghold Trap should no longer ignore Root Immunity.

Traps should not triggered by corpses anymore.

Tempest of Set

Inner Charge will now properly remove its effect after casting Lightning Strike.

Set’s Life Spark will now wait until you are fully dead before trying to resurrect you.

COMBAT

All Channeling spells now use mana, even if it is a small amount…

The base Immunity chance on all players is now 5%.

The base Immunity cap on all players is now 15%.

Sidestep will now increase the player’s Immunity Cap by 10%.

You can no longer go into hiding while fighting a much lower level NPC.

Fixed a bug where, if your current target went into hiding, you wouldn’t be able to target him again when he reappeared unless you’d targeted something else in the meantime.

Combat transitions for all characters dual-wielding any combination of weapons should now be smoother.

Female polearm users who double tap should see a correct animation.

Charge can no longer be used on non-alive targets.

All weapons should now work correctly with the combos available to that weapon type. (ex. Guardian combo Slaughter).

Combo timers are now adjusted to not time out when the server lags.

The female charge animation has been corrected to not throw the female backwards anymore.

GUI

When shift-clicking a character name in chat, information about that player will be shown in yellow in the same window you clicked in.

Players should no longer see duplicated buff icons for some abilities on their clients.

The modified damage multipler in various tooltips now shows up with percent values, as intended.

Combo and spell tooltips should always display with gray text now.

Maps updated for Tortage Island, Tortage Day, Tortage Night, and the volcano.

You will now see an onscreen message when you cast a targeted spell without a target.

Combos should now show more information about what they are doing. Also, the order in which this information is displayed has been changed.

GUILDS

Fixed some visual issues for player city buildings.

ITEMS

Fixed an issue with tier 5 one handed edged weapons. These can now all be dual wielded.

All vendor-bought resources purchased will appear in the “Bag” tab and not the “Resource” tab of the inventory.

Sacrarial Cabochon Iolite will now give the proper invulnerability bonuses.

Cotton and Cottonwisp can no longer be found on NPCs.

Guardian tier armor wrist and gauntlet pieces will now give bonuses to polearm and 1h weapons.

Fire and Glory spear is no longer tiny.

Loot has been distributed to the new chests in Atzel’s Fortress.

Bloodsire Boots should no longer cause weird ankle animations.

Dark Templar raid armor, such as Gauntlets of Baleful Blood, now only gives bonuses to 1h weapons.

MOUNTS

Mounting rhinos while having your weapons drawn should now work.

NPCS/MOBS

Removed long range bows from NPCs.

Npcs will not try to attack players that have left the playfield anymore.

(Eiglophian Mountains) Chief Uruk’A has dinged, and is now a higher level!

(Imirian Ravine) Blade Champion Krol should now reset properly.

(Imirian Ravine) Deatheater Setmorpok has had his name changed to Deatheater Setkanh.

(Kheshatta) Scorpion Archers should now behave normally, and exit stealth when agroed.

(Kheshatta) Selkhetite Archer spells damage has been changed, and has been nerfed to proper values. They should also no longer bypass damage deflection (Such as PoM Hand of Mitra)

(Scorpion Cave) Scorpion Abomination should now regenerate health less frequently.

(Tarantia Noble) Fading Black horses should now have animations.

(Tarantia Noble) Aviton’s pants are no longer clipping with his tunic.

(Tarantia Noble) The Nemedian Archers have decided to use arrows again.

The spell Sabazio’s Constriction cast by the Blood Constrictors in the Sabazios encounter will now damage players as intended.

Agroed deer should once again have animations while chasing you.

Yetis have had their textures corrected.

Gameplay in the Tarantia Noble Disctrict Villas has been updated.

Bosses in the Main System are no longer mezzable.

Har-Shebesh should no longer become passive in some rare situations.

PVP/ MASSIVE PVP
Massive PVP

You will no longer incorrectly learn a siege camp resurrection point when you are not in a guild.

Ballistas will now properly despawn after a tower is destroyed.

You can now attacking Siege Buildings with melee, spells, and siege weapons.

Several collision fixes done for Battlekeep buildings.

PVP

All members of a murderous group now receive the full penalty, instead of sharing it.

Minigames - You will no longer be able to have different tier players in your team when your team joins a match.

Minigames - Buffs for carrying the Skull have been renamed to ‘Carrying Skull.’

QUESTS
Destiny Quest (Priest)

Awakening II: Defend the townsfolk - Waymarker changed to an area waymarker so it’s easier to spot.

Destiny Quest (Rogue)

Awakening III: The Tortage Keep instance has been revamped slightly.

Awakening III: Ulric should no longer sleep with his eyes open.

General Quest

(Atzel’s Approach) War Standard - Should have a slightly more interesting quest ending.

(Atzel’s Approach) Kidnapping and Torture - Added feedback when interacting with the last palisade.

(Conarch Village) Rotten Molars - The drop rate on teeth has been changed. Now 2-4 teeth will drop per mob.

(Eiglophian Mountains) Flowers of the Snow - Corrected waypoint for returning to Nola.

(Eiglophian Mountains) Rithrall will now speak to the player in the quest ‘Convincing the Hunter’.

(Field of the Dead) The Price of Treason - Quest item added.

(Field of the Dead) The Rescue of Isobail II - Now has a more accurate waypoint.

(Field of the Dead) The Curse of the Werewolves - Now has a larger area waypoint.

(Kheshatta) Grim Grey God - Added animations for interacting with the sarcophagi and pedestals.

(Kheshatta) “Heady Kaphil Liquor”, “The Spice in the Sand”, and “Anuket Spring Water” quests have had item respawn rates tweaked.

(Kheshatta) The Abomination - Item rewards will now be given out correctly.

(Khopshef) The Aberration - Hamadi should now patrol correctly at all times.

(Khopshef ) The Dead Devotee of Derketo should no longer be selectable when you are not on the quest.

(Khopshef) The Slave Rebellion - The cage key will now drop correctly.

(Scorpion Cave) Quest “The Four Accursed Keys” has had it’s goal coordinates set properly.

(Tarantia Noble) Catus for the quest “Nobles of Tarantia” has been moved, and the quest coordinates updated.

(Thunder River) Moonshine - An Empty Bottle will now be spawned in the player’s quest inventory when starting the quest.

(Thunder River) The Kitten - The bottle of milk now has an icon. Also, the cat now correctly patrols and eventually despawns

(Villa Verde) The quest “Noble Valuables” has been changed. Vandal Despoilers will drop the loot bags now.

(White Sands) Garden of Cursed Mysteries can no longer be completed outside the search area.

TRADESKILLS

Slotted gems should now appear in armor consistently, even after zoning.

“Padparasha” gems have been renamed “Padparadscha”.

The tradeskill merchant Graehm in Lacheish will now sell Common Thread.

Resource & Gathering: The chance to get rare resources from tier 1 and tier 2 resource nodes has been increased.

Teardrop Amethyst now requires the correct gem, Flawless Amethyst.

WORLD DESIGN

Atzel’s Fortress has been re-textured and re-lit.

(Poitain) Rocks near buildings can no longer be scaled.

(Tarantia Noble) Several texture issues on buildings were corrected.

(Tarantia Noble) The climbing point in Villa Amiel is now functional.

(Tarantia Noble) It should no longer be possible to clip your camera through the wall in the Catacombs.

(Tarantia Noble) Both Torches and Braziers have had their names fixed.

(Tarantia Noble) Numerous collision fixes done here to improve movement through areas.

(Tortage) The Seadog Mansion now has a proper roof.

(Tortage) Added some fish in the ocean outside the beach.

(Tortage) The Coastal Caves have been revamped to make it easier to find your way around.

(Tortage) All ladders should be usable and work correctly.

(Tortage Night) Players should no longer be able to climb outside the playfield.

(Wild Lands) Fireplace flame effects should no longer be visible on house floors.

• Animal Handler (Beast Mastery): No longer increases speed while mounted, but now reduces the cooldown of your Master’s Call ability by 5/10 sec.
• Aspect of the Beast: Now increases your melee attack power by 10% for the hunter and the hunter’s pet.
• Bestial Swiftness is now a pet talent tree talent, and has been removed from the Beast Mastery Hunter tree.
• Disengage: This ability has been re-designed. Now leaps the Hunter backwards up to 13 yards. 30 second cooldown. Disengage now also only has one rank (rank 1).
• Distracting Shot: This shot now “taunts” the target onto the Hunter. The taunt effect will last 6 seconds. Distracting Shot now only has one rank (rank 1).
• Focused Fire (Beast Mastery): Now increases the critical strike chance of your Kill Command by 10/20/30% while Kill Command is active. This effect can stack up to 3 times, but diminishes for each charge of Kill Command.
  continue reading "WotLK Patch Notes 8/22"
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PLAYFIELDS

• The Catacombs in Tarantia Nobel district offers a host of new quests and encounters to challenge you in this group instance.

 

CLASSES

MAGE (General)

• Dark Meditation will now properly expire.
• Dark Meditation should now be removed from the spell list after untraining feats.
• The description for the general feat Purge no longer refers to multiple targets.
• The feat “Purge” has been renamed to “Spell - Purge”.
• Mirrored Iron’s proc, Set’s Shield, now hits using the correct damage type based on the Magic Rating buff running.
• Mirrored Iron’s proc, Set’s Shield, has had its damage readjusted to the proper amount.

ROGUE (General)

• Ambush ability will no longer increase the damage of the next strike.
• Mountaineer feat’s decrease to the duration of the Bruised Body debuff has been changed from 50%/100% to 45%/90% per respective rank.
  continue reading "AoC Patch Notes 8/19"
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On July 29^th Blizzard Entertainment officially announced the 3^rd annual Blizzcon gaming convention to be held Oct. 11-12, 2008 in Anaheim, CA. 

Apparently no one was ready for the pounding their online store would take when the tickets went on sale Aug. 11^th.  It crashed. Hard.  So hard that it was not even scheduled to be back online until 12pm PDT on the 12^th, it actually made it back online at 12:50pm. 

Once the store was operational the frenzied fans that had been waiting for what seemed like an eternity flocked to the site in droves to try and get their hands on tickets.  Many were quite disappointed!  The tickets were “sold out” in less than 15 minutes.

Many fans proceeded to do what they do best…bitch, whine, threaten to cancel their accounts, and in general blame Blizzard for all that is wrong in their lives. 

This went on for hours and hours until a Blizzard rep. said, “Oh wait a minute we do have more tickets after all”.  Hmmm…not sure where the “small reserve” of tickets they pulled out at that point came from, but they scheduled a grand re-opening of the Blizzcon ticket sales for 8pm PDT to sell off the newfound treasure.

At 8pm as thousands of fans pounded the refresh buttons on their browsers…the site crashed…again.  All you saw when refreshing was a transformer-like yellow robot and a statement that the site was “down for maintenance”. 

Ok, now I understand it happening once because they didn’t expect the volume of traffic and the extreme demand for these tickets, but again??  Ugg! 

So, they were able to fix their problem a bit quicker this time, but this small reserve of tickets was sold out in a matter of a few minutes, so fast in fact I don’t know how it is humanly possible to type that fast! 

Anyways, to sum it all up…just a couple short weeks and thousands of unhappy fans later Blizzard has announced they will be holding a “lottery” for the additional 3,000 Blizzcon ’08 tickets they have managed to secure or if you have a couple grand to spare and trust complete strangers implicitly you could buy them on e-bay right now!  I will participate in the lottery, yes.  I may also go buy a ticket for my state lottery at the same time.  The way I see it my odds are about as good either way!

 

I have had a chance to run through the Death Knight starting campaign a few times now and have to say that it is one of the most interesting and enjoyable questing experiences in World of Warcraft. While the content may be too dark for some people, the quests have unique objectives, the quest path is very linear and easy to follow and the rewards and humor make it well worth the time to play through it.

That said, the Death Knight does not really have an option when it comes to the initial quest line. Your initial 49 talent points (48 if you don’t quite make level 58) and the ability to leave the starting area depends on the completion of the quest line. In total there are a little over 40 quests and it takes around 2 hours to complete once you are familiar with the quests. My first run through the area took around 3 hours as I spent the time to read over the quest log, find my objectives and on a couple occasions needed to repeat a portion of a quest a couple time in order to figure out exactly what needed done.

After completing the starting area, I proceeded to Western Plaguelands where I ran through the typical quest grind and got myself just shy of 59 (you leave the starting area at or very close to 58). After this I decided to make my way to the Outland and run some Hellfire Penisula quests. I was supprised at how powerful the Death Night class was when I started killing boars and orcs right outside of Thrallmar. I was easily able to handle double and triple pulls and would typically come out of the fight at or near full health, ready to pull the next group. My character is Blood spec’d and the self healing capabilities are incredible. This lead me to the next adventure - 5 man, all Death Knight parties.

My first group headed into Ramparts with 4 Blood spec and 1 Unholy spec character. We had 2 level 59’s, 2 level 60’s and a 63. The 63 was our Unholy spec char and dropped into Frost stance for the addition armor and to play as the tank. I’m not sure the instance knew what hit it!

The Blood auras of the Blood spec Death Knight cause any self healing to apply to the other party members around you as well. With 4 Blood specs, we were doing an amazing amount of cross-healing. As long as everyone keeps swinging and using the appropriate health-generating spells, the 5 man/all Death Knight party is a viable 5 man instance group. It actually provides for a very exciting and fast-paced style of running instances. In order for everyone to survive, everyone needs to be fighting to at 100% - if anyone slacks off, characters start dying.  This, of course, means that you have to have a decent group - but that isn’t that much different than what you normally require to run instances.

All in all, the Death Kight is a load of fun to play and I look forward to writing up several more blog entries about my exploits on the beta realm. Next time I’ll get the screenshots and game play videos up for everyone to take a look at.

-Spug