MMO Champion

Warrior, Rogue, Classes changes, Blue posts

2008-09-03T13:01:08Z

Upcoming Warrior Update

Quote from: Gamnin (Source)

Hello Warriors,

Ive 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 were 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 Were working to change this ability to suspend the swing timer when you are using the ability. In other words, if youre .5 sec away from swinging your weapon when you start using Slam youll 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 targets armor.Sudden Death and Trauma swapped locations.Bladestorm now lasts 6 seconds, causing a whirlwind every second.
Protection
Toughness now also reduces duration of movement slowing effects by 10/20/30/40/50%.Improved Sunder Armor renamed Puncture, reduced to 2 ranks for 1/2 rage cost reduction.Improved Disarm reduced to 2 ranks, now reduces the cooldown of Disarm by 10/20 sec and increases damage taken by disarmed targets by 5/10%.Improved Defensive Stance reduced to 2 ranks, now reduces spell damage taken by 3/6% and any block/parry/dodge has a 50/100% chance to enrage the warrior causing 5/10% more damage for 12 sec.Vigilance will soon transfer the 10% threat lost to the warrior. It will also have 3 charges to curb using it on targets that are being hit constantly. Were still polishing this element to get it to feel right.(NEW) Warbringer is a new one point talent on Tier 9 that allows Charge to be used in combat. Did I mention the change to Improved Charge?Critical Block now also increases your chance to critically hit with your Shield Slam by 5/10/15%.Sword and Board no longer triggers when Shield Slam is used, but the chance to trigger has increased to 3/6/9/12/15%. Note these are not final numbers.
Fury
Intensify Rage and Precision swapped locations.Enrage now increases damage done by 3/6/9/12/15%, limitation on number of attacks removed.Improved Whirlwind now increases damage of Whirlwind by 10/20%, no longer reduces cooldown.Furious Attacks changed to use PPM (procs per minute) to make it trigger at the same rate regardless of weapon speed. Note that dual-wielding and haste still improve your chances.Titans Grip still needs a counterbalancing element, but what it will entail and how severe it will be is still being evaluated.
To answer a few questions:
Yes, I meant Furious Attacks, not Focused Attacks.Some notes are already in the beta, some are not updated yet on the calculator so wanted to give additional visibility to anyone else reading the forums.Warbringer: What we don't want to see is Charge becoming part of a tanking rotation. At the moment it will remain usable only in Battle Stance. An experimental idea to be sure.Stance Dancing: The short answer here is we want just the right amount of it. Final numbers are not in yet for the various talent trees. We want all trees to be viable in PvP and PvE so expect further number tuning across all classes/specs.The important upcoming change to Vigilance is the threat transfer. 10% of the target's generated threat will go to your threat total.Bladestorm consuming rage every second is a bug that's been fixed.

Upcoming Rogue Update

Quote from: Gamnin (Source)

Heres a quick update on some additional changes weve 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 havent put any stacking protection on it yet but well 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.)
Assassination
Vigor moved to Tier 3.Relentless Strikes moved to Subtlety Tier 1, made 5 ranks for 4/8/12/16/20% chance.Murder moved to Tier 6, now increases damage by 2/4%.(NEW Tier 7) Overkill: Abilities used while stealthed and for 6 seconds after breaking stealth cost 10 less energy.Focused Attacks and Turn the Tables have swapped locations.Master Poisoner moved to Tier 9, no longer increases chance to hit with poison attacks, now increases the critical hit chance of all attacks made against any target you have poisoned by 1/2/3% and reduces the duration of all Poison effects applied to you by 17/34/50%. (This does not stack with the Paladin talent Heart of the Crusader.)Hunger for Blood duration increased to 30 seconds.
Combat
Precision now also increases chance to hit with poison attacks by 1/2/3/4/5%.Nerves of Steel will now reduce damage taken while stunned or feared by 15/30% rather than reducing duration.Improved Sprint moved to Tier 4.Blade Twisting now slows movement speed by 70%.Mace Specialization now ignores 3/6/9/12/15% of targets armor.Throwing Specialization now also has a chance to interrupt target when Fan of Knives is used.Unfair Advantage: Whenever you dodge an attack you strike back for 50/100% of your main hand weapons damage.Stay of Execution removed, replaced with Blood Poisoning.(NEW Tier 9) Blood Poisoning: All physical damage caused to enemies you have poisoned is increased by 1/2%.Prey on the Weak now increases critical strike damage of all attacks.Killing Spree is the new name for Murder Spree and should be working much better very soon.
Subtlety
Shadowstep will no longer be usable while rooted.Elusiveness moved to Tier 3, now reduces cooldown of Cloak of Shadows by 15/30 sec.Premeditation cooldown reduced to 20 sec.Preparation no longer refreshes the cooldown to Premeditation.Master of Deception reduced to 3 ranks.Opportunity reduces to 2 ranks for 10/20%.Camouflage reduced to 3 ranks for 5/10/15% speed and 2/4/6 sec off the cooldown of Stealth.Initiative moved to Tier 4, increased to 33/66/100% chance.Improved Ambush moved to Tier 4, reduced to 2 ranks for 25/50%.Serrated Blades moved to Tier 3.Wrongfully Accused replaced with Filthy Tricks.(NEW Tier 9) Filthy Tricks: Reduces the cooldown of your Tricks of the Trade and Distract abilities by 5/10 sec.Slaughter from the Shadows now also reduces the energy cost of your Hemorrhage ability by 1/2/3/4/5.Shadow Dance redesigned, now allows the use of Sap, Garrote, Ambush, Cheap Shot, Premeditation, Pickpocket and Disarm Trap regardless of being stealthed. Those abilities all gain a cooldown of 2 sec. Lasts 10 sec.

Priest / Warlock - Mind Flay Changes

Quote from: Koraa (Source)

We'll be increasing Mind Flay's coefficient (base) by roughly 30% to start, and allow Mind Flay to crit. We may also do some tuneups to the Shadow tree as well, but as other players have mentioned the tree is really not the problem, just the base spells not scaling.

Hopefully we can get the new Mind Flay in the next build, but allowing it to crit involves rebuilding the spell completely, which may take some time.

Please tell me you're going to give Affliction similar treatment.
Something similar, yes.

Blue posts

Quote from Blizzard staff

Fear break mechanics
Hex (and Fear, Entangling Roots, Freezing Trap etc.) is intended to break after a flat amount of damage relative to your HP pool, that may not currently be functioning as intended. (Source)

Holiday Achievements
We might do this. We're still working heavily on the holiday achievements. In the next build, you'll see a lot of changes to the Winter Veil stuff as well as a lot of new Love Is In The Air achievements. (Source)

Argent Champion Title (Exalted with Argent Dawn / Argent Crusade)
We recently added Argent Champion as a title. It will be in the next build. ([b...

Gundrak Items, Wintergrasp Changes, Blue Posts

2008-09-02T14:09:03Z

Build 8885 - Gundrak Quest Rewards
In the current beta build, Gundrak and Ahn'kahet aren't itemized yet. However, quests are already in the game and their rewards are a good way to give you an idea of the items you can expect in this level 76-78 5 Player dungeon.

Gal'darah Must Pay - Tol'mar at Dubra'Jin wants you to slay Gal'darah in Gundrak.

QR ZDBlue5 Cloth Spell Waist - PH
QR ZDBlue5 Plate Physical Waist - PH

QR ZDBlue5 Mail Physical Waist - PH
QR ZDBlue5 Leather Physical Waist - PH

For Posterity - Chronicler Bah'Kini at Dubra'Jin wants you to enter Gundrak and collect 6 Drakkari History Tablets.

QR ZDBlue6 Cloth Healer Boots - PH
QR ZDBlue6 Plate Healer Boots - PH
QR ZDBlue6 Mail Healer Boots - PH

QR ZDBlue6 Leather Physical Boots - PH
QR ZDBlue6 Plate Physical Boots - PH

One of a Kind - Chronicler Bah'Kini at Dubra'Jin wants you to enter Gundrak and recover a piece of the Drakkari Colossus.

QR ZDBlue7 Healer Ring - PH
QR ZDBlue7 Spell Ring - PH

QR ZDBlue7 Tank Ring - PH
QR ZDBlue7 Physical Ring - PH

Ongoing Wintergrasp Changes

Quote from: Kalgan (Source)

Here's a quick update on some of the things coming to Wintergrasp over the course of the next few beta updates.

Graveyards will be inaccessible to attackers (ie: above normal terrain) to put a damper on gy camping.Ranking up will be based on HKs rather than killing blows (was always intended to be HKs)In the case of team imbalances, there will be escalating bonuses to the weaker team (for both honor and combat effectiveness... mostly survivability bonuses and potentially easier access to vehicles)The losing team will receive a partial bonus at the end of a battle (also based on participation)Players will be able to leave Wintergrasp at any time (via a Leave Battle UI option similar to leaving a battleground)A variety of daily quests will be introduced to the zone, including quests that are relevant when the battle isn't currently activeOngoing tuning of vehicle power (they're still on the strong side)Ongoing bugfixing and polish
Something else we're hoping to get in, but aren't certain of at this point is the ability to select which graveyard you respawn at.

Blue posts

Quote from Blizzard staff

World Server is down
This is not uncommon in beta. World Server Down means that something is specifically crashing Northrend. On our end, when this happens we track down what is causing the crash and fix it. Some things are easier to find than others. Some things are easier to fix than others. While feedback from Beta testers is absolutely crucial to us, just having people on the server doing stuff also reveals a lot to us. I know how annoying it can be to be kicked from the server but you really are helping us get things stable. (Source)

Riding Crop
The jury is still out on what's going to happen to the crop. We hope to have a solution soon. The main goal was to get the riding crop out of the trinket slot. It's very common to end up in combat with a riding crop equipped which wasn't very fun. It was also tedious to have to swap trinkets everytime you mounted (even with a mod like Outfitter or with macros).

We ran into some technical issues when we switched over to our new mount system. So the crop is somewhat in flux. The main design goal is not a trinket. (Source)

Strand of the Ancients and Wintergrasp Achievements soon
Good suggestion. We're going to be adding Wintergrasp and Strand of the Ancients achievements soon so any brainstorming by you guys is welcome. Now is the time -- let's hear those ideas! (Source)

Zhevra Mount achievement not worth points anymore
This one has been changed to be a Feat of Strength. (Source)

Death Knight (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8885))
Obliterate / Scourge Strike
I think Obliterate just needs to do more damage and Scourge Strike less. They are very similar abilities so it's easy to imagine numbers balanced in such a way that Obliterate is fun for Blood (when you don't need Death Strike) and Scourge Strike is an improvement to Obliterate for Unholy without being the only talent you ever need in that tree. (Source)

Rogue (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8885))
Poison Skills Feats of Strength ?
Gamnin mentioned Were removing the Poisons skill and making the finished poisons available on vendors for purchase. This should free up a fair amount of bag space. We should get a Feats of Strength for having the skill at max before its removal.
This is a cool idea. We'll look into it although depending on how the class team handled the removal of poisons, we may or may not be able to do this as a Feat. (Source)

Build 8885 Professions, Blue Posts, Comic

2008-09-01T15:06:29Z

Build 8885 - Professions Update
Today we've got two small updates about professions in the latest beta build.

Jewelcrafting
Some of the recipes added in build 8820 didn't have any stats, this is now fixed and 3 necklaces and rings have been added to the game.

Titanium Impact Band
Titanium Impact Shocker
Titanium Spellshock Necklace

Titanium Spellshock Ring
Titanium Earthguard Chain
Titanium Earthguard Ring

Engineering
Quests were added on the developper's island to reward engineers with a new Wormhole Generator allowing them to teleport their whole group to Gadgetzan. The item (Gigaflux Dimensional Transporter) isn't implemented yet.

The Wormhole - Bring Jon LeCraft the materials he seeks to avoid a swift death, and to get a cool new spell.

Right now, the quest require you to bring 4x[item=16006] and 2x[item=15994]. Don't bother looking for Jon LeCraft on live servers, as far as I know he's still sitting next to the forge on the Designers Island. You will eventually get rewarded with the following spell :

Wormhole: Gadgetzan - Creates an wormhole that should get you and your party members to Gadgetzan. 10 sec cast, 4 Hours Cooldown.

Blue posts

Quote from Blizzard staff

Pre-80 dungeons tuning
As a reminder, we try to tune our pre-80 dungeons to be accomplished by players who are mostly in green gear from quests and with talent specs optimized for leveling. If initial reports were that it was a challenge or a really lengthy to those of you who are level 80, I'd think the tuning was actually pretty far off from our intended target. (Source)

Mana mechanics in Wrath of the Lich King
We haven't done much work on mana generation or sustainability in part because we were working on the massive buff changes and the mana battery mechanics in general. While managing your mana is something we want you to have to consider (else why have mana at all?), ideally we don't want to balance a class around well this guy can do a lot but runs out of mana really fast. That's not a fun mechanic. (Source)

Beta Servers - Caverns of Time : Stratholme bugged and disabled
Ok, Caverns of Time in Tanaris is getting No Man's Land by tomorrow morning. (Source)

Beta Servers - Azjol-Nerub bugged and disabled
Level 77s will be able to go in without problem, the issue here is that I have temporarily disabled the zone. There was a bug with the first boss that was causing problems completing the dungeon. (Source)

Beta servers login issues
Of course, I see this theory posted a lot. I've got to say though, it's not the case. There have been clear issues with the log in process especially, and they have been investigated and are seemingly for the moment resolved. I say for the moment because there has been repeated log in issues throughout the beta and alpha, and if I was a betting man I wouldn't say there'd be no more to come. If and when they do, we'll investigate them, and I can only again repeat a request for people to remain patient and... polite. (Source)

Druid (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8885))
Mother Bear
Mother Bear is there almost solely to give Ferals a choice to emphasize tanking over dps. It is hard to meet the goal of letting them do competitve end-game tanking or competitive end-game dps if they can do both with the exact same talent allocation. (Source)

Cat DPS versus Rogue / Balance Spec
If in fact cat dps is far below rogue dps, that is not the intention and it will be fixed.

I was one of those people who just couldn't stand playing Balance in BC. I'll admit that. But I actually do think it's fun now. Features like Eclipse change up my spells a bit, and historical groaners like Hurricane are buttons I look forward to using now. (Source)

Scaling in Feral, DPS / Tanking feral builds
You can see now I hope how we are trying to allow some choices between a +dps Feral build and a +tanking Feral build. Effective scaling (also for many classes and specs beyond druids) is absolutely something on our minds and I will admit an area that has suffered in the past.

We're getting the talents and abilities in place. The numbers will follow. It is not our intent that bears have poor mitigation compared to other tanks. (Source)

Bear Tank amount of armor
If warriors end up with more armor, it won't be by a huge margin. We still want bears to be able to tank Naxx and Ulduar, and we want as many talents and abilities as possible to scale with end-game gear. (Source)

Feral DPS on Live Servers
Cat DPS is terrible on live. Now I know there are some cats at the tops of their damage meters. It happens. But I also know a lot of players who got the best gear they could, learned their class inside and out, and then cried when they saw how far they were below other melee dps.

If you like the hybrid nature of the Feral and enjoyed switching from tank to dps at a moment's notice, we haven't really done much to take that away from you. And even if you try to max out your cat potential, you're still probably going to be a pretty effective tank in many situations. (Source)

Cat spec tanking and Feral flexibility
That sound about right. A cat spec'd Feral made an amazing OT for Karazhan and even Zul'Aman and for the larger pulls in the 25-player content. You were certainly better OTs than DPS warriors or ret paladins in BC. I suspect you will still be a little better than a dps warrior just because the difference between your +dps and +tanking specs is fewer talent points than the difference between a Fury and Prot warrior. But all talents are not created equal and you can't necessarily identify the best tank by the number of talent points they've spent.

Sorry my yes isn't more solid. It's hard to get into the realm of You can be a 5% less effective tank if you spend 10% fewer talent points but maintain 15% superior dps or whatever. Part of the Feral design is flexibility. We don't want to lose that. (Source)

Warrior (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8885))
Philosophy behind tanking and Overpower
The problem with the old philosophy of tank A is better at boss A and tank B is better at boss B is that if your group has A but not B then you either hit your head against a wall or end up swapping people out fight to fight. To some extent certain classes will probably remain better at certain fights, just because we're still trying to have different class mechanics. Probably the cleanest way to say it is if you have a druid MT (with a good build, gear and skill) you should be able to tank every boss in the game. You shouldn't feel like you have to recruit a palad...

Wrath of the Lich King - Build 8885

2008-08-30T07:06:34Z

Talent Calculator - Build 8885
The Talent Calculator has been updated to the latest build !

Class Skills and Talents list - Build 8885
The lists of all the skills and talents have been updated for each class.

Druid	Hunter	Mage	Paladin
Balance Feral Restoration Talent List Talent Calc.	Beast Mastery Marksmanship Survival Talent List Talent Calc.	Arcane Fire Frost Talent List Talent Calc.	Holy Protection Retribution Talent List Talent Calc.
Priest	Rogue	Shaman	Warlock
Discipline Holy Shadow Talent List Talent Calc.	Assassination Combat Subtlety Talent List Talent Calc.	Elemental Enhancement Restoration Talent List Talent Calc.	Affliction Demonology Destruction Talent List Talent Calc.

Warrior	Death Knight
Arms Fury Protection Talent List Talent Calc.	Blood Unholy Frost Talent List Talent Calc.

Undocumented class changes

Quote from Blizzard staff

Death Knight (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8885))
Detailed changes not available yet, please check the updated skills list and talent calculator.

Druid (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8885))
Detailed changes not available yet, please check the updated skills list and talent calculator.

Hunter (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8885))
Detailed changes not available yet, please check the updated skills list and talent calculator.

[img]http://static.mmo-champion....

WoTLK - New Beta Build

2008-08-30T04:08:24Z

Update - Added a blue post about the ZA Bear Mount while you wait. It won't be available anymore after the deployment of content patch 3.0 on live servers.

WotLK - New Beta Build
It's still unclear if it also means the beginning of PTRs 3.0.2 or not, stay tuned for all the changes !

Quote from: Gradina (Source)

We will be taking down the Beta realms at 2:30PM Pacific time today August 29th 2008 to update to the latest build.

We expect this process to take from six to eight hours.

Thank you for your patience!

ZA Bear Mount and new content patch

Quote from: Zarhym (Source)

No. This item will no longer be available with the release of the next content patch. Mind you this patch will happen before the release of Wrath of the Lich King.

Patch 3.0.2 - On Debuffs, Buffs, and Raid Stacking

2008-08-29T07:06:11Z

3.0.2 - On Debuffs, Buffs, and Raid Stacking

Quote from: Zarhym (Source)

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
Physical Vulnerability Debuff: Blood Frenzy, (2nd Talent Spec TBA)
Melee Haste Buff: Improved Icy Talons, Windfury Totem
Melee Critical Strike Chance Buff: Leader of the Pack, Rampage
Attack Power Buff (Flat Add): Battle Shout, Blessing of Might
Attack Power Buff (Multiplier): Abomination's Might, Trueshot Aura, Unleashed Rage
Ranged Attack Power Buff: Hunter's Mark (only Hunters benefit, so no need to exclude against other class abilities)
Bleed Damage Increase Debuff: Mangle, Trauma
Spell Haste Buff: Wrath of Air Totem
Spell Critical Strike Chance Buff: Moonkin Aura, Elemental Oath
Spell Critical Strike Chance Debuff: Improved Scorch, Winter's Chill
Increased Spell Damage Taken Debuff: Ebon Plaguebringer, Earth and Moon, Curse of the Elements
Increased Spell Power Buff: Focus Magic, Improved Divine Spirit, Flametongue Totem, Totem of Wrath, Demonic Pact
Increased Spell Hit Chance Taken Debuff: Improved Faerie Fire, Misery
Percentage Haste Increase (All Types): Improved Moonkin Aura, Swift Retribution
Percentage Damage Increase: Ferocious Inspiration, Sanctified Retribution
Critical Strike Chance Taken Debuff (All types): Heart of the Crusader, Totem of Wrath
Melee Attack Speed Slow Debuff: Icy Touch, Infected Wounds, Judgements of the Just, Thunderclap
Melee Hit Chance Reduction Debuff: Insect Swarm, Scorpid Sting
Healing Debuff: Wound Poison, Aimed Shot, Mortal Strike, Furious Attacks
Attack Power Debuff: Demoralizing Roar, Curse of Weakness, Demoralizing Shout
Stat Multiplier Buff: Blessing of Kings
Stat Add Buff: Mark of the Wild
Agility and Strength Buff: Strength of Earth Totem, Horn of Winter
Stamina Buff: Power Word:[/b] Fortitude
Health Buff: Commanding Shout, Blood Pact
Intellect Buff: Arcane Intellect, Fel Intelligence
Spirit Buff: Divine Spirit, Fel Intelligence
Damage Reduction Percentage Buff: Grace, Blessing of Sanctuary
Percentage Increase Healing Received Buff: Tree of Life, Improved Devotion Aura
Armor Increase Percentage Buff: Inspiration, Ancestral Healing
Cast Speed Slow: Curse of Tongues, Slow, Mind-numbing Poison.

In each category, you can only benefit from the most powerful spell granting that effect. For example, Fel Intelligence grants spirit and intellect, both weaker than Arcane Intellect and Divine Spirit. If a player has Fel Intelligence and receives a stronger Arcane Intellect buff, he will gain the intellect value from Arcane Intellect and the spirit value from Fel Intelligence.

In most cases, fully-talented players will have exactly equal power on the strength of these buffs and debuffs. Fel Intelligence is an example of where one ability is weaker than others. The buffs in the Increased Spell Power Buff category are also not all the same potency, as they scale and grow in radically different ways. In virtually every other case, however, the buffs are equal. This means, for example, that fully-talented Battle Shout and Blessing of Might now grant the exact same amount of attack power.

In addition to this change, we also needed to address the mana battery roles in a raid. The mana regeneration effect they grant is no longer limited to their own party, and it no longer depends on the amount of damage they deal. Each time they trigger the mana regeneration effect, 10 people in their raid group will receive a buff which causes them to regenerate 0.5% of their maximum mana each second. This buff, Replenishment, will be given preferentially to raid members with the lowest mana, but will re-evaluate which raid members receive it each time it is fired. Replenishment is provided by Shadow Priests, Survival Hunters, and Retribution Paladins.

Finally, we have modified Heroism and Bloodlust to affect the entire raid. However, all affected raid members will be unable to cast or benefit from Bloodlust/Heroism for 5 minutes.

Below you will find a list of the changes to abilities which exhibit new behavior regardless of the exclusive categories. The changes usually mean the old behavior was removed and replaced by the new behavior. Numbers listed are for maximally-talented versions. Here is that list of changes:

Improved Scorch: Increases spell critical strike chance against the target.
Winter's Chill: Also increases spell critical strike chance against the target.
Elemental Oath: Grants 5% spell crital strike to raid members.
Improved Moonkin Aura: Grants 3% haste of all types.
Earth and Moon: Increases spell damage taken from all schools by 13% on the target.
Misery: Causes spells cast at the target to have +3% spell hit.
Shadow Weaving: Buffs only self.
Improved Shadow Bolt: Buffs only self.
Expose Weakness: Buffs only self.
Shadow Embrace: Buffs only self.
Blood Pact: Grants health instead of Stamina.
Fel Intelligence: Has replacement ranks that grant flat values of Intellect and Spirit.
Frost Aura: Excludes properly against all other resistance buffs.
Grace: Reduces damage taken by target by 3%.
Rampage: Increases melee and ranged critical strike chance by 5% for the raid.
Improved Faerie Fire: No longer benefits melee and ranged hit chance, only spell hit.
Hunter's Mark: No longer increases attack power bonus from attacks against the target.
Improved Hunter's Mark: No longer grants melee attack power.
Sting (Hunter pet): Now acts as a minor armor debuff.
Waylay: Attack speed reduction changed to 20%.
Icy Touch: Only slows melee attack speed (not ranged or spell).
Tree of Life: No longer grants healing based on spirit, grants 3% increased healing received to raid.
Demonic Pact: Now buffs raid instead of debuffing monsters.
Focus Magic: Now buffs raid instead of debuffing monsters.
Totem of Wrath: Now grants a flat amount of spell damage, and all enemies in its radius have an increased chance of being struck by criticals.
Heroism: Cannot be recast while caster has Exhausted debuff, and those with Exhausted debuff cannot be affected by it.
Bloodlust: Cannot be recast while caster has Sated debuff, and those with Sated debuff cannot be affected by it.
Vampiric Touch: Grants Replenishment mana regeneration buff to up to 10 raid members on dealing damage.
Hunting Party: Grants Replenishment mana regeneration buff to up to 10 raid members on specified shots.
Judgements of the Wise: Grants Replenishment mana regeneration buff to up to 10 raid members on Judging.

Spectral Gryphon, Dungeon Loot, Wintergrasp, Blue posts

2008-08-28T17:07:37Z

WotLK Mounts - Spectral Gryphon
Today's mount ... isn't really a mount actually. In the current build of the WotLK beta, people dying in Storm Peaks are resurrected on a ghost flying mount ! Running to your corpse could be very hard in a region with so many mountains and developpers solved it by giving you a very nice mount. Obviously, its only purpose is to make corpse running easier in the zone and it fades off once you're back among the living.

Build 8820 - Additional Dungeon Loot
A few more items were added to the dungeon loot list.

Halls of Lightning

Tornado Cuffs (Mail - Bracers)
Pauldrons of the Lightning Revenant (Plate - Shoulders)

Ionar's Girdle (Plate - Belt)
Thundercloud Grasps (Cloth - Hands)

The Occulus
Dragonflight Great-Ring (Others - Ring)

Lake Wintergrasp Upcoming Changes

Quote from: Verimonde (Source)

Were hoping to get the zone into better shape in the next couple patches. Heres a few things that should be coming in the next build:

All vehicles should be despawn after the battle ends
Demolisher and Siege Vehicle health has been reduced by 50-75%
Demolisher and Siege Vehicle ram attacks no longer knock a player high enough to kill them
Jet Bomber health has been reduced
Bomber damage has been increased
Players in Bombers should no longer take damage
Reward for holding the keep has been added
The Goblin Workshops in the North and South now also supply players with land mines that deal bonus damage to tanks

We also hope to have a system for rewarding only players that participated in the battle working soon.

Blue posts

Quote from Blizzard staff

Profession recipes collection achievements
We're working on the ability to do these kind of achievements. We wouldn't do anything percentage based but rather choose a flat number and add more achievements as we add more content.

Most likely, you'll see a cooking version like this in the near future. Versions for the primary professions won't go live until account-based achievements are active. We don't want to encourage people picking up and dropping profressions simply to gain achievements. (Source)

Feats of Strength - Spirit of Competition 2008
Great idea. We implemented two Feats... one for the Tabard and one for the Pet. (Source)

Shaman (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8820))
Anticipation / Shamanistic Focus changes / Windfury concerns
One change we're doing to Anticipation is changing it to 3-points, and giving it disarm reduction. We are also most likely going to change Shamanistic Focus to make it a flat mana reduction in shock cooldowns. It's too spammy right now, and the class has too many on proc buffs. (Source)

Edit: BTW, one thing I totally agree with is the Windfury Weapon concern. We'll see if we can make the ability less complicated/mathy.

Warlock (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8820))
Warlock changes and Patch 3.0 Deployment
We'll be doing some considerable work on Warlocks before that patch hits. (Source)

Warrior (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8820))
Furious Attacks
This talent will see some revision before retail so don't worry about a world where warriors are dual wielding daggers for MS bonanzas. (Source)

BlizzCon Ticket Drawing Winners Selected

Quote from: Zarhym (Source)

The winners of the BlizzCon 2008 Ticket Drawing have been chosen. Weve sent emails to 1,500 randomly selected eligible Blizzard Account holders containing instructions for purchasing up to two tickets to the show. For your security, please note that in this email we are not asking winners to email us credit card information directly, nor are we asking winners to call Blizzard for any reason.

If we still have tickets remaining after this initial round, we will select more winners from the original opt-in pool. We will make an announcement on our websites once all tickets available have been sold. For more information, refer to the BlizzCon Ticket Drawing FAQ: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9023727679sid=1

BlizzCast Episode 5: Special WWI Edition
Nothing really related to the game itself in this Blizzcast, but still a nice read if you're interested in what happened during the Worldwide Invitational.

Quote from: Wryxian (Source)

This special Worldwide Invitational wrap-up edition of BlizzCast begins with a brief chat between RTS Community Manager Karune, World of Warcraft Community Manager Nethaera, and Diablo III Community Manager Bashiok about their WWI experiences. Bashiok then takes you into the mind of Diablo III Lead Designer Jay Wilson, and the two discuss some recent hot issues surrounding the game. Listen to the show now or check out the transcript to see all the featured artwork.

Download the new episode here:
http://eu.blizzard.com/blizzcast/

Transcript for the new episode:
http://eu.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode5.xml

World of Warcraft Downloads for Your Phone
Don't get too happy about this, there are a bunch of nice things to download here but you will have to pay 1.50 / $1.99 for a wallpaper and 3 / $3 for a ringtone.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Carry a little piece of Azeroth wherever your real-world travels take you with our new World of Warcraft-themed wallpapers and ringtones for your phone. Theyre part of a new service that lets you download content related to your favorite Blizzard Entertainment games to supported mobile phones.

Over 50 pieces of content are currently available, including ringtones of World of Warcrafts capital city themes and the distinctive murloc gurgle, as well as wallpapers featuring character artwork, class and faction emblems, and more. Visit the new Mobile Ringtones and Wallpapers page for more information -- and while youre there, be sure to check out our StarCraft and Diablo mobile content, too.

Patch 3.0.2, Achievements, Dungeon Loot, Blue posts

2008-08-27T16:08:43Z

Patch 3.0.2 on PTR soon
The 3.0.2 Content patch introducing some of the WotLK features before the release of the expansion might be deployed on PTRs sooner than what we expected ...

Quote from: Tigole (Source)

None of the classes are done. They are still being iterated on. 3.0 will be on the PTR's soon. There is still a lot of testing before 3.0 would go live to public servers.

If you look back at past patches, we've had patches on the PTR for over 2 months before.

Also, the european PTR forums have already been cleaned from all posts to get ready for the new PTR Phase - 27/08 PTR forum cleaned

Quote from: Slorkuz (Source)

To keep this forum relevant to the current or upcoming version on the PTRs, all old threads have been removed. This will be done soon after each patch test cycle is completed and the patch is applied to the regular realms.

Informational sticky threads will be reposted after each forum wipe, and as new information about the current or upcoming patch becomes available it will be added in this forum.

Achievements - Feats of Strength (Realm First)

Quote from: Tigole (Source)

Realm Firsts are implemented in the next beta build although they will be slightly broken due to the fact that we have data issues with existing beta testers. For now, here's the list. We'll probably add more.

Realm First to 80
Realm First insert class here to 80
Realm First insert race here to 80
Realm first insert tradeskill or secondary skill to 450
Realm First 10/25 end-boss kills

Keep in mind, this will be broken on beta realms slightly. For example, in the current build, Realm First Mage to 80 is actually implemented. Well, Daelo, our Lead Encounter Designer, was testing something and leveled a Mage to 80 instantly and got the achievement for the server. On live realms, this will never happen. On live realms, all blizzard employee accounts are not counted toward server-firsts. But this part of the technology was not yet implemented.

Also, when those Realm First achievements go live, they won't be accurate on the beta realms. But on live realms, the data will be pure and the information will display correctly.

Something to note about Realm Firsts:

A Realm First window stays open for 1 minute after initial completion of the Feat Of Strength. This means if 25 people kill Malygos as a Realm First, they'll all get credit. But what this also means is that if two players reach level 80 within a minute of each other, they will both get credit as well.

Also note that achievements might be tracked as soon as the upcoming content patch is deployed on live servers.

Quote from: Tigole (Source)

Originally, the answer was no. We were going to wait until Northrend opened. But we will most likely put the system live for 3.0. This could of course change but the current leaning is to put the system live with 3.0.

Build 8820 - Additional Dungeon Loot
A few more items were added to the dungeon loot list posted yesterday.

The Nexus - Heroic Mode
Arcane-Shielded Helm (Plate - Helm)

Halls of Lightning
Hewn Sparring Quarterstaff (Staff)
Kilt of Molten Golems (Mail - Legs)
Mantle of Electrical Charges (Cloth - Shoulders)
Cape of Seething Steam (Others - Cloak)
Chaotic Spiral Amulet (Others - Neck)

Blue posts

Quote from Blizzard staff

Flying Mounts in Dalaran
For the time being, it is intended that you cannot fly within the city of Dalaran. We want you to be able to fly into Dalaran and fly out of Dalaran (via mounting at the flying landing or in the sewer pipe) but we don't want people flying around the city streets. We do want people to be able to mount on their ground mounts in the city (but not indoors).

This isn't entirely set up properly yet and not all things are working. Most of this will be implemented over the coming weeks. If it's horrible, we'll change it. But that's what we're trying out right now.

A big complaint of Shattrath was that it did not feel like a city. A goal of Dalaran was to re-capture the bustling street feel of places like Stormwind and Orgrimmar. Flying mounts work contrary to this goal. (Source)

Changes to Illidan encounters with the 3.0.2 patch and new talents
Changes can be made to encounters if we feel they are necessary to allow the fight to work right. That said, the release of the patch isn't tomorrow, it's sometime in the coming weeks, so you still have time to work on the raids. Good luck on Illidan. (Source)

Netherdrakes in WotLK
We don't have any current plans to remove the ability to get the Netherdrakes in Outland, we'll let you know if anything changes. (Source)

Rogue (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8820))
Lack of rogue changes in WotLK Beta
Beta implies that the game is in a testing process and currently incomplete. Your assistance in testing and providing feedback is much appreciated, however, we ask that you remain patient while we continue to push out new content, abilities, and balancing adjustments each week.

No class is going to be left behind when all is said and done. The point of working through a Beta process is to ensure the product is fully polished by the time it is slated for release. We ask that you consider this before expressing frustration over a lack of battle-ready talents and abilities for your class in its current state. We will continue to push out changes for the Rogue class -- as with every other class -- so you will all have plenty of time to test out the updates. (Source)

Warrior (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8820))
Intensify Rage
Thank you for bringing up this concern. After examining the situation we agreed this would potentially be a problem. Precision and Intensify Rage have now switched places in the talent tree. We want this to be something that a furry warrior has access to without making arms warriors feel they have to have it to be functional. (Source)

8820 Loot List V2, Pre-WotLK Patch, Blue posts

2008-08-26T20:08:42Z

WotLK Beta Build 8820 - Loot List V2
The 2nd version of the loot list is available ! What's new here ?
By popular demand from blood elves haters, all models screenshots are using human models once again. A lot of items were added to most of the instances. (Even Naxxramas)Added a category for Season 5 rewards, not like there is a lot of items here for the moment but we had to list them somewhere.Ratingbuster has been added to all the tooltips.
The latest additions are :
Arena Season 5
Weapons - LK Arena 2 2H Mace
Naxxramas
Weapons - Naxxramas 25 Trash Loot 2H Mace (2H Mace)
The Nexus
Plate - Grips of Scuptured Icicles (Gloves)
Mail - Dragon Slayer's Sabatons (Boots), Frozen Forest Kilt (Legs)
Leather - Spaulders of the Careless Thief (Shoulders)
Cloth - Cleric's Linen Shoes (Boots), Opposed Stasis Leggings (Legs)
The Oculus
Weapons - Wyrmclaw Battleaxe (2-Hand Axe), Lifeblade of Belgaristrasz (Dagger)
Plate - Girdle of Obscuring (Belt), Eredormu's Ornamented Chestguard (Chest)
Mail - Spaulders of Skillful Maneuvers (Shoulders)
Others - Centrifuge Core Cloak (Cloak)
Halls of Lightning
Weapons - Eternally Folded Blade (1H Sword), Projectile Activator (Gun)
Mail - Leather-Braced Chain Leggings (Legs)
Cloth - Raiments of the Titans (Chest)
Others - Gjarngrin Family Signet (Ring)

Arena - Season 5
Weapons
LK Arena 2 2H Mace

Naxxramas
Weapons
Naxxramas 25 Trash Loot 2H Mace (2H Mace)
Naxxramas 25 Spider Wing Boss 3 Loot 1 2H DPS Mace (2H Mace)
Nax 10 Badge Loot Tank Shield (Shield)
Nax 10 Badge Loot Healer Shield (Shield)

Caverns of Time - Stratholme

Weapons
Meathook's Slicer (1H Sword)
Dreadlord's Blade (2H Sword)
Beguiling Scepter (MH Mace)
Tome of Salramm (Off-Hand)
Leeka's Shield (Shield)
Sempiternal Staff (Staff)

Plate
Spiked Metal Cilice (Belt)
Slaughterhouse Sabatons (Boots)
Discarded Silver Hand Spaulders (Shoulders)
Crusader's Square Pauldrons (Shoulders)

Mail
Waistband of the Thuzadin (Belt)
Treads of Altered History (Boots)
Gauntlets of Dark Conversion (Gloves)
Epaulets of Market Row (Shoulders)

Leather
Ouroboros Belt (Belt)
King's Square Bracers (Bracers)
Gloves of Northern Lordaeron (Gloves)
Kilt of Sewn Flesh (Legs)

Cloth
Demonic Fabric Bands (Bracers)

Others
Flowing Cloak of Command (Cloak)
Necklace of the Chrono-Lord (Neck)
Enchanted Wire Stitching (Ring)

The Nexus - Heroic

Weapons
War Mace of Unrequited Love (MH Mace)
Telestra's Journal (Off-Hand)
Bulwark of the Noble Protector (Shield)

Plate
Flame-Bathed Steel Girdle (Belt)
Girdle of Ice (Belt)
Grips of Scuptured Icicles (Gloves)

Mail
[url=http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/20...

Content Patch Before Wrath of the Lich King / Arenas

2008-08-26T06:08:14Z

Update - Added a preview of Season .. 5 ? Arena rewards from beta servers : LK Arena 2 2H Mace (Reminder : Naxxramas 25-Man 2H Mace is Naxxramas 25 Spider Wing Boss 3 Loot 1 2H DPS Mace)

Content Patch Before Wrath of the Lich King

Quote from: Eyonix (Source)

With the release of Wrath of the Lich King approaching, we wanted to provide you with some important information. In preparation for the expansion, we will be issuing a new content patch in the coming weeks. Much like the patch made available shortly before The Burning Crusade's release, this content patch is designed to bridge current game content with that of the expansion and will contain some exciting changes and additions.

We have outlined some of the larger features scheduled to release with the patch below:

New class spells and talents
Stormwind Harbor
Barbershops in capital cities
Zeppelin towers outside of Orgrimmar and Tirisfal Glades
Two brand-new Arenas featuring challenging new layouts, terrain hazards, and moving obstacles
Guild calendar
Hunter pet skill revamp
New profession: Inscription

As mentioned above, this is not a comprehensive list, just some of the major highlights. Well post the full patch notes as soon as theyre available. Regarding Inscription, please note that all Burning Crusade players will be able to select Inscription as one of their two professions and level up to a skill level of 375 with it. Upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King, players who purchase and install the expansion will be able to continue leveling in Inscription and the other professions beyond 375.

Wrath of the Lich King Arenas
Preview of Season .. 5 ? Arena rewards from beta servers : LK Arena 2 2H Mace

Quote from: Wryxian (Source)

We want to provide some information about the direction of the Arena system. Upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King, players will find they are still able to access the Arena system at level 70 for rated matches. Those competing in the Arenas at 70 will still be able to attain items using Arena points and rankings; however, we do not currently plan to offer new items or titles for this bracket. Players who level past 70 will have their Arena points reset to 0 and be removed from all Arena teams in the level-70 bracket.

Two new skirmish brackets (71-75, 76-80) will be available for players who wish to hone their Arena skills while leveling in Northrend. Those who reach level 80 will once again have the opportunity to create new Arena teams and play in rated matches once a new season starts. New items, titles, and end-of-season rewards will be offered to the most successful teams at level 80. Additionally, the sets released for the Arenas in Wrath of the Lich King will no longer share aesthetic similarities with tiered raiding gear. We want those equipped with the best PvP rewards and those with the best raiding sets to stand out from each other. Players at level 80 will also have the opportunity to compete in two new Arenas featuring challenging new layouts, terrain hazards, and moving obstacles.

WotLK Beta Build 8820 - Dungeon Loot

2008-08-24T13:05:54Z

WotLK Beta Build 8820 - Dungeon Loot
Now is the 2nd and probably the most interesting part of this new build : dungeon loot ! People are slowly reaching level 80 and most of the new loot will be discovered today. Stay tuned for updates !

Updates
Nothing yet !

The Nexus - Heroic Mode

Weapons
War Mace of Unrequited Love (MH Mace)
Bulwark of the Noble Protector (Shield)

Mail
Bands of Channeled Energy (Bracers)

Leather
Helm of the Singing Grove (Helm)

Others
Cloak of the Enemy (Cloak)
Band of Frosted Thorns (Ring)

Halls of Lightning

Weapons
Hardened Vrykul Throwing Axe (Thrown)

Plate
Ionar's Girdle (Belt)
Fists of Loken (Gloves)

Mail
Leather-Braced Chain Leggings (Legs)

Cloth
Volkhan's Hood (Helm)

Utgarde Pinnacle

Plate
Reanimated Armor (Chest)

Mail
Tear-Linked Gauntlets (Gloves)

Cloth
Silken Amice of the Ymirjar (Shoulders)

The Oculus

Mail
Headguard of Westrift (Helm)

Leather
Horned Helm of Varos (Helm)
Sidestepping Handguards (Gloves)

Cloth
Verdisa's Cuffs of Dreaming (Bracers)
Vestments of the Scholar (Chest)

Caverns of Time - Stratholme

Weapons
Dreadlord's Blade (2H Sword)
Meathook's Slicer (1H Sword)
Beguiling Scepter (MH Mace)
Sempiternal Staff (Staff)
Tome of Salramm (Held in Off-Hand)
Leeka's Shield (Shield)

Plate
Slaughterhouse Sabatons (Boots)
Spiked Metal Cilice (Belt)
Discarded Silver Hand Spaulders (Shoulders)
Crusader's Square Pauldrons (Shoulders)

Mail
Waistband of the Thuzadin (Belt)
Treads of Altered History (Boots)
Gauntlets of Dark Conversion (Hands)
Epaulets of Market Row (Shoulders)

Leather
Kilt of Sewn Flesh (Legs)
Ouroboros Belt (Belt)
Gloves of Northern Lordaeron (Gloves)
King's Square Bracers (Bracers)

Cloth
Demonic Fabric Bands (Bracers)

Others
Flowing Cloak of Command (Cloak)
Enchanted Wire Stitching (Ring)
Necklace of the Chrono-Lord (Neck)

Wrath of the Lich King - Build 8820

2008-08-22T05:06:06Z

Updates
Not yet ! But a lot more to come.

Undocumented class changes

Quote from Blizzard staff

Death Knight
Druid
Hunter
Mage
Paladin
Priest
Rogue
Shaman
Warlock
Warrior

Patch notes update
We had a preview of most of these changes on the talent calculator updates, however there are a few new things here.

Quote from Blizzard staff

Hunter (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8788))
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.Improved Stings (Marksmanship): Now a 3-point talent, down from 5-points.Kill Command: This ability now increases the damage done by your pet's special abilities by 60%. Each attack will reduce the damage bonus by 20%. 1 minute cooldown.New Talent - Aspect Mastery (Beast Mastery)New Talent - Hunter vs. Wild (Survival): Increases you and your pet's attack power and ranged attack power equal to 10/20/30% of your total Stamina.New Talent - Lock and Load (Survival): You have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target and a 10/20/30% chance when you sting a target to cause your next 3 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo.New Talent - T.N.T. (Survival): Your Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Explosive Shot have a 5/10/15% to stun targets for 2 sec when they deal damage, and increases the critical strike chance of your Explosive Shot and Explosive Trap by 5/10/15%.Pathfinding (Beast Mastery): Now also increases the movement speed while mounted by 5/10%.Readiness (Survival): Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5 minutes.Spirit Bond (Beast Mastery): Also increases healing done to you and your pet by 5/10%.Steady Shot: Now has a 2.0 cast time, up from 1.5.Surefooted (Survival) now reduces the duration of movement impairing effects by 16/25/50% (instead of resist % chance).Survival Instincts (Survival): This has been moved to tier-2, up from tier 6.Survivalist (Survival): Now increases your total Stamina, instead of your total Health.The arming time has been reduced to 1 second, from 2 seconds for all traps.Trap Mastery (Survival) is now an 11-point talent.Trueshot Aura - This aura is now raid-wide.
Paladin (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8788))
Vengeance (Retribution) now stacks up to 2 times, reduced from 3.
Rogue (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8788))
Mace Specialization (Combat) no longer stuns enemies, and instead increases critical damage bonus by 2/4/6/8/10%.
Warrior (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8788))
Enrage (Fury) now increases damage done by 3/6/9/12/15%, limitation on number of attacks removed.Improved Charge (Arms) now generates 5/10 rage.Improved Sunder Armor (Protection) renamed Puncture.Mace Specialization (Arms) no longer stuns enemies, and now generates 10 rage.Shield Wall now reduces all damage taken by 60% for 12 seconds, cooldown reduced to 5 minutes.Thunder Clap damage increased, cooldown increased.

Scheduled Maintenance - Beta Build 8820

2008-08-22T05:06:06Z

Scheduled Maintenance - Beta Build 8820
The beta patch Build 8820 is being deployed on beta servers ... More info soon !

Quote from: Gradina (Source)

We will be taking down the Beta realms at 2:30PM Pacific time today August 21th 2008 to update to the latest build.

We expect this process to take from six to eight hours.

Thank you for your patience!

WotLK Trailer, Buffed.de interview, Blue posts

2008-08-21T17:06:22Z

Wrath of the Lich King - Cinematic trailer
The Wrath of the Lich King cinematic trailer is now available on the official site ! You can download the high-resolution version from the Blizzard Downloader

Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack interview on buffed.de
Getbuffed.com also posted an interview of J. Allen Brack (Production Director) and Tom Chilton (aka. Kalgan, Lead Game Designer), it's shorter than the one from gamona but we still learn a bunch of new things on Icecrown and Arthas.

What can we expect from the currently closed zones in the Beta?
J.A.B: Icecrown is the home of the Lich King. So you'll see the seed of the scourge power. So there will be lots of different scourge things that happens there. Eventually there will be an actual raid to face the Lich King. That will not be when we release Wrath of the Lich King. That will be later on. In Storm Peaks we actually have two different dungeons, that are based on the titans, which are the creators of Azeroth. The next dungeon to open will be the Halls of Lightning.

T.C.: In Icecrown Glacier, theres something a little bit different that players may not have seen before, which is the Horde and Alliance quest hubs are actually gunships that are flying above the zone. Theres an Alliance gunship and a Horde gunship which are sorta the quest hubs.

J.A.B.: The idea behind it is, the Icecrown glacier is so full of the scourge, that neither the Horde or the Alliance have been able to get a toehold, and to create an actual base. So they've actually flown these goblin and gnomish engineering vehicles up and they act as the quest hubs.

? ? ? (Couldn't understand the question)
J.A.B.: The Halls of Lightning is the second of the titan dungeons that we'll be releasing with Wrath of the Lich King. I did a playtest of Halls of Lightning last week and its coming along real well, looks really cool. The art style for it is very good, very exciting. It looks other-worldy. It definitely has a lot of other worldy kind of influences. The architecture that the titans have is really different from the Horde and Alliance architecture. So it just looks very ancient, very powerful, very titan'ish.

Blue posts

Quote from Blizzard staff

Tanking in Wrath of the Lich King
We *will* give you the tools to do it. We just might not give you those tools the same way another class gets them. There are no two-handed tanking weapons, yet I suspect 50% or more of DKs will use two-handed weapons. Neither DKs nor druids have shields. Druids need defense less than other tanks because they can achieve crit immunity. We can do something similar for your damage reduction (bake it into bear form, or put it in a talent are two obvious choices). Now, when you get your leather though, we are assuming you gem and enchant it as a tank would.

I'm sorry we are neglecting paladins on the forums. None of the tanking trees are very far along yet, and ironically the DK ones are probably the most stable. The paladin ones may be the least stable since the class changed so much, so it's hard to offer a lot of comment on specific talents right now. I mention druids a lot because we are talking a lot about them right now. The Arms and Fury warriors recently got some really nice work done on them, so hopefully Prot will follow. (But again I stress we won't know if the talent trees offer all of the threat, mitigation, survivability and tools they need to until we compare endgame tanking more.)

As far as what the Prot warrior brings to a raid, it is true that all tanks bring some ammount of target debuffing. But more importantly, we are in the middle of a pretty big analysis of raid buffs and debuffs. It is a large enough topic that we probably shouldn't muddle up this thread too much of that discussion, but in brief:

The overall goal is that you should want to bring raiders because they are your friends or because they are very good players, not because their buff is so awesome that you can't live without it. We would like you to be able to get all of the big buffs and still have some remaining slots that you can fill how you want (you know assuming you have enough healers and CC or whatever). We would like to get things to where no single spec always justifies a raid spot because their buff is impossible to replace or live without. (Source)

Tanking in Wrath of the Lich King and Itemization
No class should need an awesome set of tank gear for a L76 dungeon. Once you get close to 80 and start to talk about heroics, then you absolutely need some good blue tanking gear, and that kind of stuff is available as drops and quest rewards.

Our early tests suggest DK mitigation, avoidance and health aren't far below other tanks (assuming those tanks are using similar gear and aren't coming in with Sunwell epics). Their avoidance tends to be a little higher and stamina a little lower, but not significantly (and I should stress that these are very preliminary tests). It could be that the mobs just hit too hard.

One change we made recently is baking in the old bonus from Blessing of Salvation into tanking forms. Up until now you were pretty much just doing without the old Salv because there was no way to replace it, and many raiding guilds will tell you that buff is (was) mandatory. Now you get it for free.

That obviously won't help survival much, but it will affect threat enormously. (Source)

Druid (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8788))
Feral Tanking and Itemization
I totally get this. Druids won't be popular tanks if everyone knows them as the OOM tank. When I say big health pool I'm not talking about 30% more than a warrior, and I'm not even sure that's the route we'll go. But since the big health idea generates a lot of discussion, I'll walk you through our thought process.

Druids are going to have a harder time hitting the armor cap in Lich King largely because there is no leather tanking gear, and virtually no bonus armor at all (except on a few pieces like rings and necks). Now we can't just make druids do without armor, or they won't compete with other tanks. We can't just bake the armor into Dire Bear Form though, or we risk making resto druids even better in PvP. So when I have mentioned big health pools, that is partially because we're trying to solve the problem where druids need armor but can't get it. Big health is a way to do with less armor, but it's not a total fix for the situation, it definitely has drawbacks, and it doesn't mean 30% more health and 30% less armor. If I had to guess, all of the tanks will end up having pretty similar endgame stats, minus obvious things like block.

Keep in mind how good a well-geared druid tank would be in live if we hadn't added Sunwell Radiance. It is surprisingly easy to make bears too good or not good enough. We have to tread carefully.

But we haven't changed the design of wanting bears to be able to MT. And that doesn't mean technically they can MT but all the healers complain and as soon as the warrior logs on, you eagerly swap him back in. MT means MT. (Sourc...

Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack interview on Gamona

2008-08-21T02:08:31Z

Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack interview on Gamona.de
Gamona.de had the chance to interview J. Allen Brack (Production Director) and Tom Chilton (aka. Kalgan, Lead Game Designer) and ask a few questions about Wrath of the Lich King. The most interesting parts of the interview are :
Premades characters level 80 will be made available near the end of the beta testing process. Whether it will be done on a new server or on the existing beta servers isn't decided yet. The next beta build will most likely feature new level 80 dungeons and remove the level cap. In the current state of WotLK beta testing, the retribution paladin is doing a lot more damage than expected and will most likely be nerfed. Naxxramas mechanics changes to suit 25 players raid include a new version of the Four Horsemen allowing non-tanking classes to tank some of the bosses.

How is the beta going ? Is everything alright ?
T.C. - Things are definitely going very well, we've got a lot of very good feedbacks through the beta process. We've been making a lot of changes and improvements based on the feedback but overall it's coming along very well.

The beta servers have been very unstable in the last days, is there any improvement ?
J.A.B - We've got our server team who is looking into all problems, the point of our beta process is to actually figure out what problems we have and get them all fixed before we do the big release.

Is there any plan to open more beta realms ?
T.C. - We do actually have plans to start up a realm that has premade characters at level 80, the reason being that we're going to want to give players another opportunity to test some of the end game content without having to go through the leveling process. We can probably do that near the end of the beta process but it might be on a different server, this isn't decided for sure.

When do you plan to open more instances and rise the level cap to level 80 ?
T.C. - Each time we do another patch on the beta we try to open up new content for the players. [...] I don't know if we'll be able to patch this week while we're being here in Europe but that should be coming very soon.
J.A.B - For each patch we try to evaluate how much content do we have, is it time to give players the chance to open that up ? We're talking internally about when it is time to rise us up to level 80 but we're getting close.

Why didn't you separate PvE from PvP more?
T.C. - We made that decision because prior to The Burning Crusade, what we found as people increase their gear they die quicker because PvE gear is specialized gear. For DPS classes as an example it is designed to do the most damage as possible in the shortest time as possible and it does not have a lot of survivability. If that's the best gear players have available, then what happens is they take that into PvP is that they die very quickly and there's not much time for their strategies to evolve. What we've found is that in PvP we had to create gear with balanced offensive capability and survivability and because of that we had to create this separate set of gear with the new stat called resilience to make sure fights lasted long enough so that they are interesting and have depth. [...] Well, certainly something that we want to do for Litch king is better crossover so that when you're doing PvE you are actually able to accumulate some PvP gear in case you decide to try out some PvP you'll have a good
starting point. The same would go in reverse, if you're doing a lot of PvP, you might have a couple of really good items that you could use into PvE and do pretty well.

What about the paladin, is there any plans to nerf the DPS Paladin's damage from what it is on beta servers now?
T.C. - We are just now beginning on going through the heavy tuning phase, we really don't do that until the end of the beta generally, where we start going through all of the classes and finding the things that are way out of balance and there's no doubt right now that the ret paladins are doing a lot more damage than what we would expect.

Are you satisfied with how the death knight is going?
T.C. - Yeah, the death knight has been coming along very well, we've been getting a lot of good feedback from it, people seem to like the class, they seem to enjoy the starting experience very much, we really kind of put our heart into the death knight class, hopefully that's going to pan out.

What talent tree do you prefer on the death knights?
T.C. - Personally, I really enjoy the frost talents, but I believe all three trees are very strong, they all definitely all have a strong role to play.

What else do you plan? Are there any more instances coming?
T.C. - Well, certainly, there are a lot more instances we plan to release, CoT: Strath instance, Ulduar, a handful that we are play testing internally that are pretty much ready for players to see, should be one of the patches that come out any time now [...] but it should be rolling out there very quickly.

All the instances were very well designed, however, I consider it unfortunate that say, Azjol-Nerub only has three bosses, its very short.
T.C. - Most players would consider that a fortunate thing, we've been getting a lot of feedback in the past that some of the instances were taking too long, so we're going for the middle ground here, we want to have some diversity between the instances too, there are a lot of players that miss the old big dungeon crawls, like BRD, etc. We want to find ways to deliver that too, but ultimately I think the core experience is that players should be able to get through an instance in less than an hour. Its something that we're trying to be very conscious about in Wrath, unlike in Burning Crusade when we had the heroic instances, those take a very long time to get through, 3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours depending on your quality of gear. We're trying to make sure when Litch King comes out that when you do the heroic instances, it doesn't take as much time going through it as you did before.

But, we need the epic feeling from the Blackrock Depths too.
T.C. - We're trying to capture that too as much as possible.

How do you plan to balance the 10 and 25 man raid instances? Are there any changes in boss design?
T.C. - There definitely are changes in boss design, for example, not only do we have to have changes in boss design even to get it down to 25 from the way Naxx used to work, certainly in the past at level 60, the four horseman boss took eight different tanks for instance. There definitely has been design change, but the integrity of the encounter remains the same, you still have the four horsemen, they all are still there. The mechanics of the fight are different, you will tank them in different ways, the horsemen will be tanked by different classes, even non tanking classes, kinda like what we have done in the past with warlocks tanking. We have some mechanics like that in place so that we can maintain the integrity of the encounters even though the actual mechanics will be different.

Will Naxx still be one instance?
T.C. - It is still a single instance, it still has that epic feel.

When will Wrath be released?
T.C. - When its ready. Specifically, the fifth of when it's ready.