Spugnort's

Archive for August, 2008

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 cooldownAssassin
• 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

Read the rest of this entry »

• 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. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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

Over the course of the past week we here at Spugnort’s World have spent quite a bit of time in the WotLK beta.  I have personally had the opportunity to run through the entire opening questline for the Death Knight and I must say I think right now this is my favorite character class!  I do love my hunters, but this class can take a real beating from multiple mobs and the health bar barely flinches due to spells and abilities which return health to you.  The class also has some wicked attacks that deal major damage. 

Now, Blizzard knew that starting a character out at level 55 would produce all kinds of issues, so they hook you up with some decent green gear to start out with.  As you quest along, not only do you get experience and cash, but you also receive some pretty sweet blues including a sword, rings, breastplate and boots just to name a few.  With each quest you turn in you are also granted talent points, some turn ins are worth more points than others, but by the time you reach level 58 and have completed your opening questline in its entirety you will have accumulated the same number of talent points as a character reaching 58 who started at level 1 (not a bad deal,eh?).

I would have to say my favorite quest is the one that requires you to fly on a cool dragon mount and shoot ice bolts at your targets.  The ice bolts require the use of the dragon’s mana so when he gets low you have to swoop to the ground and devour one of the human targets you’re fighting to replenish his mana.  I must say though that the quest “Grand Theft Palimino” pretty much rocks, too.  Hint: if you’re a Tauren, steal one of the little colts…it’s hilarious!

So, basically you’re asked to steal, murder the innocent, and pillage your way through a couple levels, so while this may not be for the morally righteous, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Priest

• Glyph of Lightwell 01 (Priest) (Class: Priest) – Increases the amount healed by your Lightwell by 1 to 6%
• Glyph of Renew 01 (Priest) (Class: Priest) – Increases the duration of your Renew by 3 sec.
• Glyph of Circle of Healing 01 (Priest) (Class: Priest) – Your Circle of Healing spell heals 1 additional target.
• Glyph of Psychic Scream 01 (Priest) (Class: Priest) – Increases the duration of your Psychic Scream by 3 sec.
• Glyph of Dispel Magic 01 (Priest) (Class: Priest) – Your Dispel Magic also heals your target for 3% of maximum health if it removes a damaging effect.
• Glyph of Fear Ward 01 (Priest) (Class: Priest) – Reduces cooldown and duration of Fear Ward by 30 sec.
• Glyph of Flash Heal 01 (Priest) (Class: Priest) – Your Flash Heal has a 50% chance to reduce the cast time of your next Greater Heal by 0.3 sec
• Glyph of Prayer of Healing 01 (Priest) (Class: Priest) – Increases the radius of your Prayer of Healing spell by 5 yards.
• Glyph of Mind Flay 01 (Priest) (Class: Priest) – Increases the range of your Mind Flay spell by 5 yards but it no longer reduces the target’s movement speed.
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Death 01 (Priest) (Class: Priest) – Targets below 35% health take an additional 5% damage from your Shadow Word: Death spell.
• Glyph of Holy Nova 01 (Priest) (Class: Priest) – Your Holy Nova spell heals for an additional 30% but deals 1 to 0% less damage. Read the rest of this entry »

Blacksmithing

Socket Bracer
Permanently add a socket to your bracers. Requires a level 60 or higher item.

Socket Gloves
Permanently add a socket to your gloves. Requires a level 60 or higher item.

Tailoring

Lightweave Embroidery
Embroiders a subtle pattern of light into your cloak, giving you a chance to cause an additional 800 to 1000 Holy damage when you damage an enemy with a spell.
You can only embroider your own cloak and embroidering your cloak will cause it to become soulbound.

Darkglow Embroidery
Embroiders a magical pattern into your cloak, giving you a chance to restore 300 mana when you cast a spell.
You can only embroider your own cloak and embroidering your cloak will cause it to become soulbound.

Swordguard Embroidery
Embroiders a magical pattern into your cloak, causing your damaging melee attacks to sometimes ignore 1000 of your target’s armor.
You can only embroider your own cloak and embroidering your cloak will cause it to become soulbound.

Herbalism

Wild Growth
Embrace the natural energies surrounding you, healing you for 2000 over 15 sec. (300/480/720/900/1200/2000 Depending on Rank). Instant, 5 min cooldown