World of Warcraft : wotlk

Update: WotLK Release Date Now Officially Confirmed

Zyuu — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:13:33 GMT

Earlier today we reported that Wrath of the Lich King would be released the 13th November 2008 and it's since then been confirmed by Blizzard.

In the frozen wastes of the north, the Lich King Arthas Menethil rallies his undead army and schemes to bring an end to all life on Azeroth -- and in a couple of months, you'll begin your epic journey into Northrend to confront the Lich King and his minions yourself. Blizzard Entertainment's second expansion to World of Warcraft -- Wrath of the Lich King -- will be in stores on November 13 in North America, Europe, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Russia, and on November 14 in Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia. The expansion will be available in Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on November 18, and the launch timing for China will be announced at a later date. For more information, read the press release or visit the Wrath of the Lich King website.

Wrath of the Lich King will be available in both a standard edition and a special Collector's Edition (in select areas). The Collector's Edition will contain an art book, behind-the-scenes DVD, exclusive in-game pet, and more. For pictures and a complete list of contents, check out the Collector's Edition website.

Retailers in North America are currently taking pre-orders for the game. Reserve your copy now online!

Click to pre-order

WotLK Release Date: November 13 2008!

Zyuu — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:43:01 GMT

The date is finally set. Wrath of the Lich King will be released November 13 2008. Make sure to pre-order your copy now!

Only about two months away from the release of Wrath of the Lich King means that patch 3.0.2 will most likely go live sometime around the middle of October.

The source is a huge advertisement over at Wowhead which says "IN STORES 11.13.08". Since said site is an official Blizzard fansite, it's safe to say that this date is definite.

Patch 3.0.1 Now Available for Download

Kody — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 06:12:17 GMT

Hold on to your hats, patch 3.0.1 is now up on the background downloader, and Zarhym wasn't kidding at all when he said it was going to be big. 821MB to be exact.

So, you may want to get started now with the download! As a reminder, you can choose to have the downloader running in multiple ways: while you're playing, when you exit WoW, or both.

And here's a screen cap of the downloader, just to prove it's actually available! If you haven't started your launcher in a while, you may want to so you can grab this patch ahead of time. Don't wait until patch day!

Thanks to Levicen for the heads up!

WotLK Beta Build 8926 - Instance and Badge Loot

Zyuu — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:09:42 GMT

"Binds to account" -- Scaling Items

The build introduced a new type of item that scales with the level of your character. The cool thing is these items are also Binds to account, meaning that you can trade them between characters on the same account whenever you want! These items will scale with your character's level from 1 all the way to 80, so no matter what level you are, you'll gain some benefit from the item.

Not all effects are available at level 1; they're gradually added in some cases as you gain levels.
Currently the only Binds on account items available are found on the Emblem of Heroism token vendor in Dalaran.
The items use a text color many will be familiar with if you've seen Martin Thunder. This was originally used as the "Artifact" color code in the game files, but no Artifact quality items were ever implemented.
The shoulder slot items all seem to gain a 10% experience gain bonus at some point. It doesn't have it at level 1, but it does have it at level 55, 70, and 80.

Naxxramas 25-man loot

Two-Handed Weapons

The Jawbone (2H Mace)Cloaks
Cloakd of the Shadowed Sun (Melee)
Shawl of the Old Maid (Caster)Amulets
Chains of Adoration (Spell)Rings
Seized Beauty (Caster DPS)Trinkets
Cloth
Sash of the Parlor
Belt of False Dignity
Distorded Limbs
Sympathetic AmicePlate
Pauldrons of Unnatural Death (Tank)
Inexorable Sabatons (Tank)
Bracers of the Tyrant (DPS)
Poignant Sabatons (Spell DPS)
Waistguard of Divine Grave (Spell DPS)

One-Handed Weapons

Split Greathammer (1H Mace)
Silent Crusader (1H Sword)Throwing Weapons
Shields
Wands
Bows & Guns
'Off-Hand'
Leather
Dislocationg Handguards (Melee)
Infectious Skitterer Leggings (Melee)
Sinner's Bindings (Melee)
Boots of Septic Wounds (Melee)Mail
Tunic of Masked Suffering (Physical DPS)
Slime Stream Bands (Physical DPS)
Depraved Linked Belt (Physical DPS)

Naxxramas 25-man Armor Sets

'Death Knight'
DPS Set
Tank Set

Druid
Feral Set
Healer Set
Nuker Set

Hunter
Hunter Set

Mage
Mage Set

Paladin
Healer Set
Melee Set
Tank Set

'Priest
Healer Set
Nuker Set

Rogue
Rogue Set

Shaman
Healer Set
Melee Set
Nuker Set

Warlock
'Warlock Set

Warrior
DPS Set
Tank Set

Obsidian Sanctum 25-man

Chestplate of the Great Aspects (Plate)
Council Chamber Epaulets (Mail)
Hyaline Helm of the Sniper (Mail)

Obsidian Sanctum 10-man

Titan's Outlook (Plate)
Wyrmrest Band (Ring)
Signet of the Accord (Ring)
Dragon Hide Bag

Badge Vendor

Emblem of Heroism drops from Heroics and 10-person tier 1 instances, Emblem of Valor drops from 25-person tier 1 instances. More items coming as we update the news!

Two-Handed Weapons

Cloaks
'Amulets'
Emblem of Heroism Amulets
Rings
Trinkets
not yet.Cloth
Emblem of Heroism Belts
Plate
Emblem of Heroism Belts

One-Handed Weapons

Throwing Weapons
None yetShields
Wands
Bows & Guns
'Off-Hand'
Leather
Emblem of Heroism Belts
Mail
Emblem of Heroism Belts

WotLK -- Beta Build 8926

Zyuu — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:54:06 GMT

Obsidian Sanctum 25-man loot: Chestplate of the Great Aspects (Plate), Wyrmrest Band (Ring)
Obsidian Sanctum 10-man loot: Signet of the Accord, Dragon Hide Bag
Blackmsithing: 7 new recipes
Tailoring' Epic Cloth:'Ebonweave Set, Spellweave Set, Moonshroud Set
Tailoring Blue Cloth: Frostsavage Set
'New Jewelcrafting' Recipe: Titanium Frostguard Ring
Heroic Mode is now available for the following dungeons: Utgarde Pinnacle, The Oculus, Azjol-Nerub, CoT:Stratholme. (src)
A new raid instance 10/25-man is available! The Obsidian Sanctum, also referred to as Chamber of Aspects: Black, is a raid dungeon with the portal located under Wyrmrest temple in Dragonblight. (src)
Naxxramas 25-man is now itemized. (src)
WoWhead updated to the latest build 8926

New Glyphs - Druid, Paladin, Shaman

Druid
Glyph of Dash - Reduces the cooldown of your Dash ability by 20%.

Paladin
Glyph of Seal of Blood - Your Seal of Blood or Seal of the Martyr increases the mana received from Spiritual Attunement by 10% while active.
Glyph of Seal of Righteousness - Reduces the cost of your Judgement spells by 10% while Seal of Righteousness is active.
Glyph of Seal of Vengeance - Your Seal of Vengeance or Seal of Corruption also grants 10 expertise while active.

Shaman
Glyph of Ghost Wolf - Your Ghost Wolf form regenerates an additional 1% of your maximum health every 5 sec.

Uncategorized Changes

New Mounts
Azure Drake - Summons and dismisses a rideable Azure Drake. This is a very fast mount. This mount can only be summoned in Outland or Northrend.
Black Mammoth - Summons and dismisses a rideable Black Mammoth Mount. This is a very fast mount.
Black Polar Bear - Summons and dismisses a rideable Black Polar Bear. This is a very fast mount.
Blue Drake - Summons and dismisses a rideable Blue Drake. This is a very fast mount. This mount can only be summoned in Outland or Northrend.
Brown Polar Bear - Summons and dismisses a rideable Brown Polar Bear. This is a very fast mount.
Bronze Drake - Summons and dismisses a rideable Bronze Drake. This is a very fast mount. This mount can only be summoned in Outland or Northrend.
Red Drake - Summons and dismisses a rideable Red Drake. This is a very fast mount. This mount can only be summoned in Outland or Northrend.
Twilight Drake - Summons and dismisses a rideable Twilight Drake. This is a very fast mount. This mount can only be summoned in Outland or Northrend.

Professions Changes

Blacksmithing
7 new recipes

Enchanting
Enchant Ring - Stamina: Permanently enchant a ring to increase Stamina by 24. Only the Enchanter's rings can be enchanted, and enchanting a ring will cause it to become soulbound.
Enchant Weapon - Accuracy: Permanently enchant a melee weapon to increase critical strike and hit rating by 25. Requires a level 60 or higher item.
Enchant Weapon - Berserking (Not yet implemented): Proc based enchant causing "Strength increased by 200 but armor reduced by 50%."
Enchant Weapon - Black Magic: Permanently enchant a melee weapon to cause your damaging spells to sometimes inflict a painful curse. Requires a level 60 or higher item.

Inscription
Certificate of Ownership - Allows you to rename your pet.

Jewelcrafting
Titanium Frostguard Ring

Tailoring
Ebonweave Set
Spellweave Set
Moonshroud Set
Frostsavage Set

Class Changes

Death Knight (8926: Skills | Talents)
Blood
- Bloody Vengeance: Reduced to 3 ranks, stacking up to 9% damage (Old: 5 ranks, stacked up to 15% damage)

Frost
- Annihilation: Changed to 33% instead of 30%. Same outcome, just different numbering.
- Killing Machine: Now only has 50% chance to proc on crit (Old: 100% chance)
- Frigid Dreadplate: Changed to 33% instead of 30%. Same outcome, just different numbering.
- Merciless Combat: Damage reduced to 12% (Old: 20%)
- Rime: Now increases your Icy Touch crit chance by 15% and gives it a 15% chance for a free Howling Blast (Old: Increases damage of Icy Touch and Howling Blast by 30%).
- Howling Blast: Tooltip damage reduced
- Blood of the North: Changed to 33% instead of 30%. Same outcome, just different numbering.
- Frost Strike: Damage reduced to 30% (down from 50%)

Unholy
- Necrosis: Now deals 10% Shadow damage (down from 25%)
- Blood-Caked Blade: Hits for 20% weapon damage plus 10% for each diseases (Old: 50% weapon damage for each disease on target)
- Desecration: Damage increase reduced to 5% (Old: 10%, as if it was ever working before)
- Unholy Blight: Damage reduced significantly, to 37 tooltip damage (Old: 152). Also now has a one minute cooldown and lasts 14 seconds, down from 20.

Druid (8926: Skills | Talents)
Balance
- Nature's Splendor changed: Increases the duration of your Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Lifebloom and Flourish spells by 2/3 sec. (old: 2/3%)
- Improved Insect Swarm is now available.
- Gale Winds now increases damage done by your Hurricane and Typhoon spells by 15/30% (old: 25/50%), and increases the range of your Cyclone spell by 2/4 yards.
- Eclipse cooldown reduced from 2 minutes to 30 seconds.

Feral
- Infected Wounds attack speed reduction has been lowered, it's now -3/7/10%.
- Berserk cooldown reduced from 5 to 3 minutes and description changed: When activated, this ability temporarily grants you 30% of your maximum health while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form, causes your Mangle (Bear) and Maul attacks to hit up to 3 targets, and reduces the energy cost of all your Cat Form abilities by -50%. Lasts 15 sec. You cannot use Tiger's Fury while Berserk is active. Clears the effect of Fear and makes you immune to Fear for the duration.
- Mother Bear has been renamed to Protector of the Pack, and it's now available.
- Natural Reaction is now available.

Restoration
- Abolish Poison duration lowered from 1 min to 8 secs.
- Subtlety now reduces the chance of your spells to be dispelled (old version: only healing over time spells were affected).
- Replenish restore values changed, it's now 8 Energy, 4 Rage, 1% Mana or 16 Runic Power per tick.
- Gift of the Earthmother changed: Reduces the base global cooldown of your Rejuvenation and Lifebloom spells by 2/4/6/8/10%, and causes your Healing Touch and Nourish spells to refund 1/2/3/4/5% of their base cost for each healing over time effect on the target.

Hunter (8926: Skills | Talents)
Beast Mastery
- Aspect of the Viper changed: The hunter takes on the aspect of the viper, each ranged attack regenerates a percentage of maximum mana equal to base ranged weapon speed, but reduces your total damage done by -50%. Only one Aspect can be active at a time.
- Cobra Strikes now causes your pet's next 2 special attacks to critically hit. (old version: next 3 special attacks)
- Invigoration changed: When your pet scores a critical hit with a special ability, you have a 50/100% chance to instantly regenerate 1% mana.

Marksmanship
- Improved Steady Shot mana reduction lowered from 40 to 20%.

Survival
- Hunting Party now lasts for 15 secs.
- Lock and Load now cause your next Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo. (old version: your next 3 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells were affected by this talent).
- T.N.T critical strike chance lowered from 5/10/15% to 3/6/9%.

[[Image:mage.gif]] Mage (8926: Skills | Talents)
Frost
- Gives your Frost damage spells a 5/10% chance to grant you (old version: chance to apply) the Fingers of Frost effect, which treats your next 2 Frost spells cast as if the target were Frozen. Lasts 15 sec.
- Deep Freeze rank 4 damage lowered.

Paladin (8926: Skills | Talents)
Coming soon.

Priest (8926: Skills | Talents)
Coming soon.

Rogue (8926: Skills | Talents)
Assassination
- Hunger for Blood now refunds 15 energy. (old description: "refunds the energy cost")

haman (8926: Skills | Talents)
Elemental
- Thunderstorm has new ranks (rank 1-4) and knock up range increased to 6 yards: You call down a bolt of lightning, energizing you and damaging nearby enemies within 10 yards. Restores 5% mana to you and deals 1450 to 1656 Nature damage to all nearby enemies, knocking them back 6 yards.
- Lava Flows bonus spell damage lowered: Increases the amount of bonus spell damage on your Flametongue Weapon by an additional 15/30/45%, and increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Lava Burst spell by an additional 24%.
- Storm, Earth and Fire changed: Your Lightning Bolt gains an additional 2/4/6/8/10% of your spell power, your Earth Shock's range is increased by 1/2/3/4/5 yards and the periodic damage done by your Flame Shock is increased by 10/20/30/40/50%.
- Totem of Wrath rank 4 damage increased: Summons a Totem of Wrath with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem increases the damage done by spells and effects by 280 for all party and raid members, and increases the critical strike chance of spells and effects by 3% against all enemies within 40 yards. Lasts 2 min.

Enhancement
- Shamanistic Focus now reduces the mana cost of your Shock spells by -45%. (old version: After landing a melee critical strike, you enter a Focused state. The Focused state reduces the mana cost of your next Shock spell by 60%.)
- Maelstrom Weapon now affects healing spells: When you critically hit with a melee weapon, you reduce the cast time of your next Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning or Lava Burst, Lesser Healing Wave, Healing Wave or Chain Heal spell by 4/8/12/16/20%. Stacks up to 5 times. Lasts 15 seconds.

Restoration
- Nature's Guardian cooldown reduced from 8 to 5 seconds.
- Ancestral Awakening healing lowered: When you critically heal with your Healing Wave or Lesser Healing Wave, you summon an Ancestral spirit to aid you, instantly healing the lowest health friendly party or raid target within 40 yards for 7/13/20% of the amount healed. (old: 20/40/60%)
- Tidal Waves changed: You have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance after you cast Chain Heal to lower the cast time of your next Lesser Healing Wave or Healing Wave spell by 30%. In addition, your Healing Wave gains an additional 4/8/12/16/20% of your bonus healing effects and your Lesser Healing Wave gains an additional 2/4/6/8/10% of your bonus healing effects.

Warlock (8926: Skills | Talents)
Coming soon.

Warrior (8926: Skills | Talents)
Arms
- Wrecking Crew - Your melee critical hits Enrage you, increasing all damage caused by 2/4/6/8/10% for 12 sec.

Fury
- Commanding Shout is now a raid wide buff: Increases maximum health of all party and raid members within 20 yards by 1080. Lasts 2 min.
- Enrage now gives you a 30% chance to receive a 2/4/6/8/10% damage bonus for 12 sec after being the victim of a damaging attack.
- Rampage now affects ranged critical hit, in addition to melee. (Your melee critical hits cause you to go on a rampage, increasing ranged and melee critical hit chance of all party and raid members within 45 yds by 5%. Lasts 10 sec.)
- Titan's Grip allows you to equip two-handed axes, maces and swords in one hand. Also reduces your chance to hit with melee abilities that require weapons by -15%.

Protection
- Devastate changed: Sunder the target's armor causing the Sunder Armor effect. In addition, causes 80% of weapon damage plus 101 for each application of Sunder Armor on the target. The Sunder Armor effect can stack up to 5 times.
- New Talent - Improved Spell Reflection (Tier 4) - Reduces the chance you'll be hit by spells by -2/4%, reduces the cooldown of your Spell Reflection ability by -2/5 sec and when the ability is used it will reflect the first spell cast against the 2/4 closest party members.

Daily Blue WotLK Posts & The Harvest Festival

Zyuu — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:21:16 GMT

Like every day since the Wrath of the Lich King beta began, there's a large amount of blue posts which has surfaced today -- we got the summary, courtesy of World of Raids.

Also, since the summer is drawing to a close, the Harvest Festival has arrived!

Quote from: Wryxian (Source)

Summer draws to a close and the leaves of the trees begin to turn from vibrant green to rusty red, reminiscent of the blood of fallen heroes. The Harvest Festival has arrived and adventurers from all over Azeroth are gathering in Stormwind and Orgrimmar to remember those who have passed on into the Light over the fading year. Processions wind their way to Uther the Lightbringer's tomb and to Grom Hellscream's memorial as both the Horde and Alliance take a moment to pause, reflect, and remember the great ones.

To learn more about this festival, please check out our Harvest Festival page.

EU Premades

No dice.

Quote from: Vaneras (Source)

As we're moving ahead with the beta we feel specific testing on high-end PvP balance is required. Hence one (US) realm does have level 80 pre-mades available.

Between internal test realms, (upcoming) PTRs and beta realms for all regions our testing hardware is already fully utilized, and as the main testing needs are still on the vast amount of other content, other realms are kept as is.

While we appreciate everybody's eagerness to test high-end characters and PvP gear we hope you understand the need for having testing resources spread on all parts of the expansion.

WotLK Beta - Blue Posts

Casters and mana regeneration / Spirit on Naxx gear
All casters are going to need to take mana regeneration seriously again. For too long we let casters just stack +damage stats and fill themselves back up with shadow priests. You also have to consider downranking is also gone now so you can't rely on that to save you mana. Spirit is a seriously good stat now. I realize Dreamstate isn't directly a Spirit buff, but neither does it let you opt out of stat-based mana regen. (src)

As I posted in another thread, some amount of Spirit is something that all casters are going to need a lot more of. You can't stack shadow priests like you used to, and you can't downrank. Mana management is a part of all caster classes, not just trying to maximize the pewpew. We got away from that a little in BC.

We also don't always design gear to be perfectly optimal for everyone. Part of the game is examining a piece of gear, deciding if you need it or not, and how it will really benefit you. If your set pieces are perfectly optimized, it makes it less interesting to look at any other drops until you're at the next tier. (Now I'm not saying we're going to give you Str and Parry either. That said, I will bring up whether we could afford to trade a little spirit for crit on your gear. (src)

Death Knight
Yellow vs White damage
We did consider purposely lowering DK white damage so that the specials could be bigger. But it actually does some wacky things to scaling when melee classes do a much larger proportion of yellow damage than white damage -- 40% white damage is about what we shoot for, though that isn't always realized.

On-next swing attacks are very controversial. They make more sense for classes that need rage dump, but don't specifically help the DK. When we tried them for the DK, there were some people who liked the mechanic, but a lot who didn't.

You can make a compelling argument that the vision of the DK as someone swinging a big two-hander like Frostmourne doesn't jive well with runes as a power cost, since the latter tend to push you towards using more abilities more often (which necessarily pushes the damage down to compensate).

Changing that now though would be a huge setback, and I'm actually pretty happy with the DK rotations at the moment. We just need to get the damage somewhere that feels satisfying while still balanced with other classes. (src)

Druid
Balance Druids needs
What do we want balance to be able to do? What's your role?
You're a caster. Surprise, I know. But we think we didn't always give you the tools to be a good caster before. You need:

Competitive dps. Mages and warlocks just tend to get a lot of attention, maybe because there are more of them, or more races of them, or they are more archetypal classes (in the familiarity sense).
Good AE utility. Encounters and dungeons tend to get designed with the assumption that the ranged dps can do AE. Hurricane is phenomenal now. I healed a run today and did really competitive dps with Hurricane on the ranged pulls. And I wasn't even Balance! I love Starfall. It's a rare spell because it feels new -- it isn't single target and it isn't classical Hurricane-style AE either.
CC. If a group has a choice between a druid and a mage and only the mage can CC, the decision gets a lot easier. With Entangling Roots used inside, problem solved.
Group utility. I think deep balance provides that now. Even Insect Swarm and Faerie Fire have a better role now. Without the vicious cycle of Curse of Shadows buffing warlocks which lead to inviting more warlocks somewhat solved, I think it will be easier for Balance druids to get into raids regardless. We've just opened space for more classes now.
The ability to keep causing damage. I think the oomkin thing was largely addressed in BC, but it's still something we need to keep an eye on, or at least try and banish the stigma that other players still think it has.

So that's it for role. Beyond that, what I think Balance needed was a means not to go insane by mashing the same buttons all the time. My favorite talent for attempting to solve this is Eclipse. Eclipse almost by itself "saved" Balance for me. Several times I tried going Balance in Classic and BC and just couldn't do it. But Eclipse is fun just because sometimes you want to Wrath and sometimes you want to Starfire. Improved Insect Swarm starts to get at this kind of mixed up of rotations too, and even the haste benefit from Moonkin a little as well.

Those are my thoughts. I don't think Balance is done yet by any stretch, but I don't hesitate to go Balance in a dungeon or raid now, which actually says quite a lot. I think the designers have done a good job with the tree so far. (src)

Balance / Feral concerns (src)

There are no tank niches, at least the way they have been defined here. When you ask why would anyone take a druid tank over a warrior tank, the answer is because that player is a better player, not because they have the magic ability that makes an encounter much easier. If you're concern is that the preponderance of warrior mitigation and abilities makes warriors a much more effective tank than druids, then that is a legitimate problem.
We haven't finished tuning numbers yet. If cat dps is low, we'll fix it before Lich King goes live. We haven't focused on that yet because we are still working on talent trees and bugs. But you're starting to see some of it. One thing I forgot to mention is that the raid buff overhaul was a net dps loss to melee classes. We expected that would happen, but we have not yet adjusted their dps accordingly. That might not be all cats need, but I wanted to mention it before I forgot.
I know balance druids feel neglected. My time is limited, and it's totally valid feedback that I don't give all specs or classes equal attention. My choices seem to be post a little or not post at all. I'm not a CM and any time I spend here (while very valuable for me) is time I'm not fixing classes. We'll try to give balance some more love.
I think bears in particular could use a couple more situational abilities. We did lower the cooldown on Berserk and we might even do it again. I assume this doesn't count or you wouldn't be asking for more flashy abilities, but when I did Feral Charge as cat in Utgarde last night, the fight virtually stopped while everyone said "Wait? What did you just do? That looked so cool!"
Feral is going to feel a little bigger than other trees because we are specifically trying to offer you more talents than you can get. The design is that you can choose 2-3 talents to emphasize your bear role over your cart role... if you choose. If you want to try and be relatively good at both, then split the difference between those talents.

Rebirth & Innervate
At the moment we have no plans to give those abilities to other classes. The raid buff stacking change was done because it was disheartening to see players spend so much effort trying to min / max the buffs different classes brought, and understandably so, rather than trying the encounters.

We understand that the risk of having more redundant buffs across classes is homogenization and too much homogenization hurts class diversity. So long as we avoid any fights in which Innervate or brez offer a huge bonus, we don't see a reason to hand them out to everybody. That goes true for similar abilities that other classes have. (src)

Avoiding the daze effect
I believe bears with the right talents can avoid daze now. We discussed an implementation for that. It may not be in the data you have at the moment. (src)

Warlock
Metamorphosis Feedback
This is kind of a specific request, but please give us any feedback you have on Metamorphosis, the 51 Demo talent. Assume that we aren't going to swap this talent out with something else, but other than that, nothing needs to be set in stone.

Please don't use this thread for a lot of other questions or concerns about the class. (src)

WotLK -- 10-man Naxxramas Livestream

Zyuu — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 01:03:33 GMT

Currently there's a 10-man raid livestreaming directly from the new Wrath of the Lich King Naxxramas instance. Check it out below!

Road to Damnation

Serving this spectral being--this Lich King, as Kel'Thuzad was beginning to think of him--would assuredly bring Kel'Thuzad great power... and damn him for all eternity. But that knowledge came far too late. Besides, damnation had little meaning without the prospect of true death.

"I am yours. I swear it," he said hoarsely.

In response, the Lich King sent him a vision of Naxxramas. Small black-robed figures stood in a broad circle outside on the glacier. Their arms, visibly wreathed in dark magic, rose and fell in time with a droning chant that eluded Kel'Thuzad's understanding. Tremors shook the earth beneath their feet, but they kept casting.

You will go forth and bear witness to my power. You will be my ambassador to the living, and assemble a group of like-minded people to further my plans. Through illusion, persuasion, sickness, and force of arms, you will establish my hold upon Azeroth.

To Kel'Thuzad's astonishment, the ice shifted and cracked, and the top of a ziggurat pierced the frozen ground. A building was being pulled up out of the soil. While the robed figures redoubled their efforts, the vast pyramid continued its impossible emergence. Chunks of dirt and ice flew outward with explosive force. Soon the entire structure had broken free of the earth's embrace. Slowly but surely, Naxxramas rose into the air.

And this will be your vessel.

Read the full "Road to Damnation" Naxxramas story

Official WotLK Beta Patch Notes Update

Zyuu — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:54:08 GMT

The official beta patch notes have been updated to reflect build 8905 changes, and Nethaera has highlighted everything that has changed since the last build, view it all below:

Known Issues

All classes are currently undergoing a balancing pass of all talent trees.

Classes

Death Knight damage has been decreased on almost all of their abilities.

Druid

Celestial Focus (Balance): The stun proc now works with Starfall. This talent no longer has Wrath pushback protection, but instead increases your total spell haste by 1/2/3%.
Control of Nature (Balance) has been removed.
Focused Starlight (Balance): is now Nature's Majesty (Balance): Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath, Starfire, Starfall, Nourish, and Healing Touch spells by 2/4/6%.
Furor (Restoration): Now increases your total Intellect while in Moonkin form by 2/4/6/8/10%.
Moonglow (Balance): Now also works with Starfall. Moved to tier 2, up from tier 5.
Nature's Focus (Restoration): Now a 3 point talent, down from a 5-point talent. Also moved to Tier 1, up from Tier 2. Now also includes Nourish, Entangling Roots, Wrath and Cyclone.
Nature's Grasp (Balance): Can now be used and can proc indoors. This is now a base ability at level 11 and has a 100% chance to proc.
New Talent - Genesis (Balance): Increases the damage and healing done by your periodic spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
New Talent - Improved Insect Swarm (Balance): Increases your damage done by your Wrath spell to targets afflicted by your Insect Swarm by 1/2/3%, and increases the critical strike chance of your Starfire spell by 1/2/3% on targets afflicted by your Moonfire spell.
New Talent - Mother Bear (Feral): Increases the bonus attack power for Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by an additional 20/40/60%, and for each friendly player in your party, damage you take is reduced while in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 1/2/3%.
New Talent - Natural Reaction (Feral): Increases your dodge chance while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form by 2/4/6%, and you regenerate 1/2/3 rage everytime you dodge while in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form.
New Talent - Nature's Splendor (Balance): Increases the duration of your Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Lifebloom and Flourish spells by 10/20/30%.

Hunters

Aspect of the Viper - The hunter takes on the aspect of the viper, instantly regenerating mana equal to 100% of the damage done by any ranged attack or ability, but reduces your total damage done by 50%. Only one Aspect can be active at a time.
Combat Experience (Marksmanship): Now grants 3/6% Agility, up from 1/2%.
Improved Arcane Shot (Marksmanship): Now increases the damage done by your Arcane Shot by 5/10/15%.
Improved Feign Death (Survival): This talent has been replaced with Survival Tactics.
Improved Hunter's Mark (Marksmanship): Now a 3-point talent, and now increases the amount of attack power granted by your Hunter's Mark ability by 10/20/30% and reduces the mana cost of your Hunter's Mark ability by 33/66/100%.
New Talent - Survival Tactics (Survival): Reduces the chance your Feign Death ability and all trap spells will be resisted by 2/4%, and reduces the cooldown of your Disengage ability by 2/4 sec.
Rapid Killing (Marksmanship): This will now proc off Chimera Shot, but no longer works with auto-shot.
Silencing Shot (Marksmanship): This spell will now interrupt the current spell being cast on the target and lock out that school for 3 sec if the target is immune to silence effects.
Trap Mastery (Survival) is now an 11-point talent.
Trushot Aura: This Aura is now raid-wide, and now increases all ranged and melee attack power by 10%. In addition, this spell now only has one rank. All other ranks have been removed.

Mages

Slow (Arcane) mana cost reduced.

Paladins

Attack Power and Spell Power scaling on all Seals and Judgements other than Command and Blood has been reduced.
Blessing of Sanctuary reduced to 1 rank, now reduces all damage taken by 3% and generates rage, mana or runic power when a parry/dodge/block occurs.
Hammer of Wrath is now considered a Retribution spell, moved from Holy, mana cost reduced, now instant cast, global cooldown increased to 1.5, missile speed increased, now usable on targets below 35% health now scales with attack power and spell power.
Righteous Defense no longer costs mana and the global cooldown has been removed, also cooldown reduced to 10 sec.

Priests

Absolution (Discipline): This talent has swapped positions in the talent tree with Improved Inner Fire.
Enlightenment (Discipline): Increases your total Stamina, Spirit and Spell haste by 1/2/3/4/5%.
Focused Power (Discipline): Increases your total spell damage and healing done by 2/4%, but no longer increases your chance to hit with Mind Blast, and Mass Dispel.
Improved Inner Fire (Discipline) - Now also increases the bonus healing on your Inner Fire spell by 20/40/60%.(Includes the +spell power on higher ranks, as well as total number of charges).
Prayer of Mending - This spell can now critically hit.

Rogues

Anesthetic Poison now also dispels one Enrage effect on the target.
Blade Twisting (Combat) now cause all damaging melee attacks to have a 10% chance to daze for 4/8 seconds movement speed reduced by 70%.
Camouflage (Subtlety) reduced to 3 ranks for 5/10/15% speed and 2/4/6 secs off the cooldown of Stealth.
Cloak of Shadows cooldown increased to 1.5 min.
Crippling Poison reduced to 1 rank, slowing movement by 70%.
Dagger Specialization (Combat) renamed Close Quarters Combat, moved to tier 3, now increases critical strike chance with Daggers and Fist Weapons by 1/2/3/4/5%.
Damaging poisons now scale with attack power.
Deadened Nerves (Assassination) reduced to 3 ranks, now reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%.
Deflection (Combat) reduced to 3 ranks, increasing parry by 2/4/6%.
Disarm Trap range increased to 20 yards, cast time reduced, now requires stealth.
Dual Wield Specialization (Combat) moved to tier 1.
Elusiveness (Subtlety) moved to Tier 3, now reduces cooldown of Vanish and Blind by 30/60 sec and Cloak of Shadows by 15/30 sec.
Endurance (Combat) now reduces cooldown of Evasion and Sprint by 30/60 secs.
Envenom now also increases your chance to apply poisons by 25% for 2-6 seconds (based on combo points).
Evasion, Sprint and Vanish cooldowns reduced to 3 min.
Find Weakness (Assassination) is now a passive talent, reduced to 3 ranks, increases damage of offensive abilities by 3/6/9%.
Fist Weapon Specialization (Combat) removed.
Improved Ambush (Subtlety) moved to Tier 4, reduced to 2 ranks for 25/50%.
Improved Eviscerate (Assassination) now increases damage by 7/14/20%.
Improved Expose Armor (Assassination) now reduces the energy cost by 5/10, no longer increases duration.
Improved Poisons (Assassination) now increases chance to apply poisons by 5/10/15/20/25%.
Improved Slice and Dice (Combat) reduced to 2 ranks, increases duration by 25/50%.
Improved Sprint (Combat) moved to Tier 4.
Initiative (Subtlety) moved to Tier 4, increased to 33/66/100% chance.
Lethality (Assassination) now also affects Riposte.
Lightning Reflexes (Combat) moved to tier 4.
Mace Specialization (Combat) no longer stuns enemies and instead increases critical damage bonus by 2/4/6/8/10% now ignores 3/6/9/12/15% of target's armor.
Master of Deception (Subtlety) reduced to 3 ranks.
Mind-Numbing Poison reduced to 1 rank, slowing casting speed by 60%.
Murder (Assassination) moved to tier 6, increases damage by 2/4%.
Mutilate (Assassination) no longer requires you be behind the target.
Nerves of Steel (Combat) now reduces damage taken while Stunned or Feared by 15/30%
Opportunity (Subtlety) reduced to 2 ranks for 10/20%.
Poisons skill removed. All finished poisons are available on vendors rather than created by the rogue.
Precision (Combat) now also increases chance to hit with poison attacks by 1/2/3/4/5%.
Premeditation (Subtlety) duration increased to 20 seconds cooldown reduced to 20 seconds.
Preparation (Subtlety) no longer refreshes the cooldown of Premeditation.
Relentless Strikes (Assassination) moved to Tier 1 Subtlety, made 5 ranks for 4/8/12/16/20% chance.
Riposte (Combat) now slows the target's melee attacks by 20% instead of disarming them, awards one combo point.
Serrated Blades (Subtlety) moved to Tier 3.
Shadowstep (Subtlety) is no longer usable while rooted.
Surprise Attacks (Combat) now also increases Hemorrhage damage.
Vigor (Assassination) moved to Tier 3.
Wounding Poison no longer stacks, reduces healing by 50%.

Shamans

Anticipation (Enhancement): Now is a 3-point talent, down from a 5-point talent and now reduces the duration of disarm effects on you by 16/25/50%.
Healing Grace (Restoration): Healing Way and Ancestral Fortitude are now affected by the dispel resistance portion of this talent.
Tidal Focus (Restoration): Now works with Earth Shield.

Warriors

Blood Craze (Fury) now regenerates 2/4/6% of total health over 6 seconds.
Blood Frenzy (Arms) moved to Tier 9, now increases physical damage caused by 1/2%.
Bloodthirst (Fury) now restores health based on a % of total health.
Concussion Blow (Protection) now causes damage based on attack power.
Deep Wounds (Arms) now requires Impale, causes 16/32/48% of weapon damage over 6 seconds.
Disarm rage cost reduced to 15.
Impale (Arms) moved to Tier 3, no longer requires Deep Wounds.
Improved Berserker Rage (Fury) now generates 10/20 rage.
Improved Defensive Stance (Protection) 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.
Improved Disarm (Protection) 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 Disciplines (Arms) removed.
Improved Mortal Strike (Arms) now increases damage by 2/4/6/8/10%, no longer reduces cooldown.
Improved Rend (Arms) reduced to 2 ranks for 25/50%.
Improved Revenge (Protection) now increases damage Revenge causes by 10/20% and gives a 25/50% chance to stun.
Improved Shield Bash (Protection) now also increases the damage of your Shield Slam ability by 5/10%.
Improved Shield Wall now increases the damage reduction by an additional 5/10% reduces cooldown by 30/60 seconds.
Improved Slam (Fury) moved to Arms.
Improved Sunder Armor (Protection) renamed Puncture reduced to 2 ranks for 1/2 rage cost reduction.
Improved Taunt (Protection) removed, effect made baseline.
Improved Whirlwind (Fury) now increases damage of Whirlwind by 10/20%, no longer reduces cooldown.
Last Stand (Protection) cooldown reduced to 5 minutes.
Mace Specialization (Arms) now ignores 3/6/9/12/15% of target's armor.
Precision (Fury) moved to Tier 5.
Rampage now causes all party and raid members within 20 yards of the Warrior to go on a rampage, increasing melee critical hit chance by 5% for 10 seconds when the warrior scores a melee critical.
Shield Block now increases chance to block and amount blocked by 100% for 10 seconds. Cooldown increased to 60 seconds, rage cost removed.
Shield Wall now reduces all damage taken by 50% for 12 seconds cooldown reduced to 5 minutes.
Slam now suspends the weapon swing timer rather than resetting it.
Taunt cooldown reduced to 8 sec.
Toughness (Protection) moved to tier 3 , now also reduces the duration of movement slowing effects by 10/20/30/40/50%.

Latest Blue Posts

Zyuu — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:10:45 GMT

The very latest of blue Blizzard posts can be found below!

Storm Peaks & Icecrown situation
Storm Peaks is crashing because of an Art/Engine related bug. There is no way we can hotfix Storm Peaks. We'll need to patch to fix it . (src)
Those zones were also causing issues. Unfortunately, we can't hotfix those areas so you'll have to wait until the next patch for them to be available. (src)

Naxxramas 25-man loot
Next major beta patch will have the 25 player loot drop. (src)

Tigole on Naxxramas and Raid difficulty
We expect Naxx to be the easiest raid dungeon in WotLK. If experienced Sunwell guilds were repeatedly wiping, the dungeon would be overtuned. The raid game will ramp up over time. There will be many extremely difficult encounters for people to face. But the early bosses in Naxx are intended to be beatable very early on.
The 10's will get hard too. It's not a casual/hardcore thing. It's more about ramping difficulty and progression. (src)

How the class changes are done?
We have spreadsheets -- huge ones. We have values for characters in greens and raid buffed with epic gear. We have estimates of mob damage and health, character downtime, the benefits from enchants, gems and glyphs. We have conversion rates of mana to runic power to energy to rage. We look at damage per second, efficiency, button presses per second, typical rotations, movement vs. standing still, mobs vs. players and every other variable we can think of (and there are a LOT of them).

In the end we come up with an estimate for what an attack should do. We come up with a budget for talents and spells just like we have a budget for items at a given level. Sometimes those estimates are wrong because we forgot to take something into account, or because there's a bug in a talent or spell somewhere that messes up the calculation.

And then we do lots of testing, and to get a reality check on our tests, we compare them to the numbers people are reporting from the beta. Repeat as necessary.

I've said this in a few posts: that our numbers can sometimes be wrong (as is the case almost any time you deal with numbers), but the methods we use to arrive at them are absolutely not sloppy. (src)

Exploration & Quest Achievements
Lost Lands (Sholozar Basin) and Balargarde (Icecrown) will be fixed in an upcoming patch. We'll try to see what's happening with Nagrand Slam (Quest). (src)

Fishing Achievements
Old Ironjaw and Old Crafty are now their own achievements. They are also removed from the One That Didn't Get Away achievement. Also, they will give retro-credit so long as you kept your fish.
Regarding giving retro-credit for The Fishing Diplomat, unfortunately, this cannot be done.
Moonglow Cuttlefish School doesn't exist in Northrend yet. The schools will be added or else the criteria will be removed from the achievement. (src)

Achievements - Cenarion faction title changed
Friend of Cenarius will be changed to Guardian of Cenarius. (src)

Achievements - 3000 Quests title changed
Ok. It's now the Seeker. (src)

Bug with achievement comparisions
A bunch of compare bug fixes are on the way in the next patch. (src)

Druid
Druid form customization and glyphs
We definitely like the idea of druid form customization. Frankly, it's been too long coming. We're not 100% certain glyphs are the best way to handle that. It's definitely a topic that is under discussion, so feedback on the topic is appreciated. (src)

Raid Tanking and itemization
We want druids to be able to MT Naxx and Ulduar.

I really don't think they're that far off, but if I'm wrong and bears collapse on Patchwerk, we'll change the numbers until they can stand up. We'll try to change the numbers in intelligent ways so that bears are tanking Arthas too and not standing in the back healing the warrior tank.

Likewise, if cat dps is always near the bottom of the dps damage meters, we'll fix that too.

There isn't any actual armor with bonus armor any longer. It was just too problematic a stat. It does still exist on non armor pieces: the rings, necks and maybe cloaks. The way the game is designed, tanks need a certain amount of armor and we'll make sure you have it without having to resort to PvP gear or Sunwell gear. As I have said before, we can boost the bear intrinsic bonus or Thick Hide or come up with a new scalar off existing stats. This feels like a solvable problem to me.

Personally, I would love to be able to get rid of Feral Attack Power as a stat. It feels a little kludgey and it makes itemization harder because you can't share with anyone else in the game. It's like having a libram for your main weapon. But it's not going to happen for Wrath, at least not initially. (src)

Hunter
Pet hit points
How easy or hard it is to kill the pet is a very important dial to get tuned right. We're trying to figure out if pet hit points are high enough. (src)

Pet dismissal in stable
This is in the plan. It may not be available right at release, however. (src)

Rogue
Assassination Tree Feedback
Just wanted to make one comment on bloat. Having plenty of talents that you want put can't get is good for the trees. Also, some trees just have a lot of talents in them because they're trying to offer some very different options, while others are quite small.

What we do want to avoid, however, is a situation where there are so many "mandatory" talents that you end up not being able to pick up the fun talents. Mandatory talents are typically those that offer passive buffs to dps or efficiency that nobody in their right mind would skip over. We're fine having some of those, but having too many can tend to push builds more towards being cookie cutters.

We realize your trees are in a big of flux, which makes it hard to comment, but on the other hand, we're in a really good position right now to make adjustments to the trees. (src)

Shaman
Thunderstorm knock up range
Not exactly intended. It's still supposed to have relatively the same knock back distance, just we toned down the knock "up" effect. Should be fixed in the next build. (src)

Warrior
About the Arms tree
Arms is definitely something on our radar. The other two trees are getting a lot closer. Arms now has some self-healing like Fury, and the Overpower changes are in the right direction. We just need to smooth out some rough spots and try to make the whole thing gel. (src)

Tanking in WotLK
I've tried to answer some of these questions in a few other threads, but I'll try and answer how AE tanking will be easier. Keep in mind that I know my version of the data which is often a week or more out of sync with your build.

1) Defensive Stance generates more threat than on Live. Essentially it has Salv built in.
2) Rank 9 Thunder Clap hits for a base 300 damage with a 12% attack power coefficient.
3) Thunder Clap is also heavily buffed by one old and one new talent that many (but not all) tanks will have.
4) Your AP will be higher because tanking gear has a lot of AP and because of the way Strength boosts Block, you're just going to want more.
5) Because you have more AP, you're hitting harder, so you should be rage starved much less in 5-player instances. So you can use Tclap when it's up.
6) Thunder Clap has a 6 sec cooldown, so you don't need to spam it.
7) There is a glyph to increase Tclap's number of targets, and while I expect many tanks will have it, we also don't want to rely too much on glyphs to fix problems with a class. So consider this a very minor component, but I did want to mention it.

When you pull (with your helpful new pulling ability) and then Thunder Clap, you are going to generate so much treat that you're going to have time to position the mobs, Cleave or Sunder them or otherwise get ready for the next big Thunder Clap. This is a big difference from Live, where Thunder Clap often barely keeps you above the threat of the rest of the group and you're begging for enough rage to use it again. (src)

Defensive Stance/Thunder Clap threat
On the issue of Defensive Stance threat...

Earlier in the beta, we removed the Defiance talent. It was a mandatory talent since encounters were designed around the very safe assumption that all Prot warriors had it. So Defensive Stance ended up generating more threat.

More recently in the beta, we did a similar thing with Salv. We pulled Salv as a blessing some time ago, so we baked even more threat into Defensive Stance (and equivalents for other tanks).

If this makes it easier to understand, imagine that everyone except the tank always has Perma Salv up and every tank has Defiance as a core ability.

On the issue of Thunder Clap threat...

Yes, the damage is 300 now. We wanted to buff damage by 50% to make up for the cooldown increasing. Having to hit it less often for a bigger effect is a good way to remove spam. It does do 75% threat (it was 150% on Live IIRC) and has an AP coefficient of 12%. Talented and glyphed, this makes it a crazy good ability... possibly too good, but we'll see. (src)

Protection Warriors in PvP
We even threw in Charge in Berserker Stance too. Maybe that will help when you aren't tanking.

We still might need to adjust the talent depending on the outcome. When we say we don't want Charge to be part of a tank's rotation, we mean that we don't want to see the normal way to tank a boss to be backup (or Intervene) then Charge back in over and over to proc a stun and get some rage. It's totally cool to use it to get around the battlefield on short notice, but we don't want the backup and Charge thing to be mandatory. It may not be, since mobs tend to follow the tank and the min range is large, but you guys are clever and we just need to see it action some first.

I don't want to totally derail this thread with a discussion of the role of Mortal Strike in PvP (which is ironic, since it would actually be a re-rail). However, the plan for now is not to have an MS-like effect in Prot.

On the one hand, we have given it out to other classes, and perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, classes lacking the debuff can struggle in Arena. On the other hand, if half or more of the specs in the game get something like MS, you are just going to exist in Arenas in a state of permanent healing debuff, in which case we should just make that an aura on entering Arena and be done with it.

We'll probably continue to evolve our views on the role of Mortal Strike. It's very much a work in progress and I'm almost certain this is not the final word on the subject. (src)

Death Knight
Unholy Blight Rank 2 Temporarily disabled
Due to a server crash, we had to disable this spell. You'll still see it in your spellbook and be able to cast it. But it will do nothing. We'll try to get the spell restored ASAP. Thanks for bearing with us. (src)

Runeforging
We have neglected this ability for a few weeks and it's time to get it back into shape. There have been a few good posts on the topic, and I am inviting you to add more feedback to this thread. At this point we are not as interested in ideas to completely overhaul the system (though if they're really, really good, I'll listen to anything). But specifics on the actual enchants would be useful. (src)

Major Death Knight Quest Change
With the new patch, you HAVE to go back and finish your quests in the death knight starting area if you want to be able to interact with vendors or NPCs in Stormwind or Orgrimmar. If any of you have been to those cities, you'll know what I mean. Eventually, death knights will experience the full quest chain before wandering out into the rest of the world. So for beta, pretend I have a big old ! over my head and I'm telling you to go back to Ebon Hold. (src)

Death knight dual wield vs. two-hander
The design is that the death knight can dual-wield or use a two-hander. I know not everyone agrees with that design, and you are certainly welcome to debate it in this thread. My suspicion is that most DKs will use the larger weapons, since a certain famous rune weapon is a two-hander, and just because it fits the kit for a lot of people. But we aren't trying to specifically punish or promote one-handed weapons either.

The design is that neither wins out and becomes the obvious choice. We are trying to do that in part because it's so rare. All rogues DW, but no paladin does. All Fury warriors DW, but no Arms warrior does. We have sprinkled the trees with talents that benefit one system or the other. Typically, dual wielding eventually wins out, damage-wise, over two-hander use. As such we can't promote DW too much or it will dominate.

Tanking is a special concern. It is NOT the design that all death knights dual-wield when tanking. There is probably a slight motivation to do so because faster swings can be useful for generating early threat, and because you can stack mitigation by choosing two tanking weapons, which are all one-handed. Working against that is the parry counterattack of most bosses, which works against dual-wielding. We do have some knobs to turn here, such as making the parry rune enchant benefit two-handed style more than one-handed style. This is something we are going to keep a very close eye on. Again, the design is that both styles are equally useful. (src)

Abilities scaling off of diseases
We think that many of the abilities that scale off of diseases scale too well off those diseases. While it's a perk of Unholy to have 4 diseases, we don't want every DK ability to be doing double damage for Unholy because 4 > 2. We will probably adjust the numbers a little so that having diseases up still matters a lot, but a little less than it is currently. (src)

Death Knight balance adjustments
If that sounds like too much of a euphamism, you could also go with nerf bat.

We have started our big numbers pass on all classes, and as many of you suspected, the death knight's damage was much too high in some situations. For comparison, their sustained dps could be 30% higher than a rogue of similar gear and skill. That's a lot. Remember, a death knight can pack 5 or 6 abilities into a 10-second window. They hit often, like a rogue, but for much bigger numbers.*

I don't want to freak anyone out, which is probably inevitable with a post of this nature, but I also didn't anyone to be unduly shocked if a new build goes out soon.

We need to get more feedback on the death knight talent trees, rotations and abilities, and to some extent that wasn't happening because opponents were dying too fast, or perhaps just because five digit crits are too distracting. We also need to get the game closer to a shippable state, which means making sure the dps of various classes at various levels of gear is more in line. I'm sorry, but from all our tests and number-crunching, DK dps was not in line. I also suspect they aren't the only class in that situation.

If we nerfed DK dps too much, then rest assured, we'll improve it. By many accounts, the class is a pretty fun one to play, and we're not about to let our first new class get largely ignored just because its dps (or tanking for that matter) aren't competitve. As always, feedback on the changes are useful, but try not to fret too much. :)

Yes, I expect many of you can cite examples where you saw another class one shot an entire group of elites. Those classes are getting adjusted too.

* - there is an expectation that a guy with a giant runeblade should be hitting for really big numbers. An alternative is to keep the Mortal Strike-like crits, but slow down the frequency that they can use those hits. I'm not sure slower rune coolups or expensive abilities would be as fun as the current implementation but it is something we could consider. Another alternative is to nerf DK white damage in order to keep the big numbers, but changing white damage can do very strange things to classes, so we'd prefer to try other routes first. (src)

Death Knight DPS
1. Whereabouts is DK damage intended to fall between other classes? It has been speculated it is between a Ret Palidan and an Arms Warrior. Is this true?
2. Are all 3 Specs (Blood, Frost, Unholy) intended to do the same baseline damage? I.E. Speccing for DPS in any of the trees should be roughly the same its just the ‘flavour’ that changes.
1) Who should do what damage in what order is a very touchy subject that ends up causing a lot of arguments. Furthermore the blue quotes tend to get used, often out of context, as a hammer to bust up a lot of discussions about class balance. It's probably easiest if I just say that among the dps classes in a raid, none should be double any of the others, and ideally nobody is 50% ahead of anyone else. The design of LK, even more so than BC, is that the different dps specs are very close in potential. Also remember when you are looking at any data parse that you need to keep in mind the skill of the player and the specific encounter. One of the challenges with the DK is there are no players who have been playing them for 3 years to know all the nuances of the character. As a rhetorical question, we ask ourselves: do we design them to be slightly weaker knowing they will get better and better over time?
2) Overall, Blood, Frost and Unholy should do the same damage. Because of the kinds of damage they do, it probably won't even out on any single fight, but overall that's the goal. We don't look at numbers and say, oh well Frost is supposed to do 10% less dps. (src)

The Gun'drak Mystery

Zyuu — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:39:07 GMT

With the addition of Gun'drak, Akali's platform in Zul'drak has been upgraded. He is still chained and tortured by the Prophet of Akali to gain powers to fight the Scourge, but the platform itself is now see-through.

After exploring the dungeon, it is clear, that Akali's platform offers a peak into the central part of the instance. The level 76-78 instance has 2 separate entrances close to this platform, both starts by taking players down below the surface using an elevator. Here they shortly come across the previously seen part where they must solve a puzzle to unlock the last boss, Prophet of Akali.

This makes us wonder, what does the currently unused main fortress of Gun'drak hold? Due to its massive size my best bet is on a raid instance that would be introduced after Naxxramas, Nexus, Chamber of Aspects and Ulduar or a second dungeon wing for high level players.

WotLK Special Edition of MMOZine

Zyuu — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 05:22:39 GMT

GamerZines today announces the publication of MMOZine Issue 6. The issue includes:

a massive hands-on preview of Wrath of the Lich King
8 exclusive videos
a virtual tour of Valiance Keep,
6 exclusive World of Warcraft desktop backgrounds
an exclusive interview with Blizzard
an introductory tutorial to the new Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

“Wrath of the Lich King is without doubt going to be the event of the year for MMO gamers,” says Dan Hutchinson, Editorial Director for GamerZines. “This issue of MMOZine has everything people could want to know about the expansion and includes some explosive revelations from Blizzard themselves.”

Download MMOZine issue 6 here. (right click, "save target as" -- PDF format)

WotLK -- Itemization, PTR 3.0, Blue Posts, Comic

Zyuu — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:29:18 GMT

WotLK Itemization - Level 80 Items #2

Here is another batch of newly discovered items, check out the complete list (daily updated).

Wands - Ancient Measuring Rod
Two-Handed Weapons - Hewn Sparring Quarterstaff
Amulet - Chaotic Spiral Amulet
Ring - Dragonflight Great-Ring
Cloak - Cape of Seething Steam
Cloth - Mantle of Electrical Charges, Thundercloud Grasps
Leather - Wristguards of Verdant Recovery
Mail - Kilt of Molten Golems
Plate - Pauldrons of the Lightning Revenant, Arcane-Shielded Helm, Rift Striders

PTR 3.0

PTR forums just got cleaned, meaning PTR 3.0 isn't that far.

PTR - 3.0 & classes
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. (src)

Achievements will be a part of the live 3.0 patch
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. (src)

WotLK Beta - Blue Posts

08/26 - Storm Peaks open
Well I'm flying through it now without No Man's Land, so yeah it does seem to be up. (src)

US Beta Realms - Stability issues
We're currently investigating some server stability issues that have started occuring since we unlocked Storm Peaks. These issues are affecting both Northrend and Lich King servers. We hope to have these addressed within the next few updates. In the meantime, the more you play, the more it will help us narrow down what the problem is. (src)

Feats of Strenght & Realm Firsts
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 to 80
Realm First to 80
Realm first 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. (src)

Flying 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. (src)

Netherdrake Mounts
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. (src)

Druid
Typhoon - It's not finished, no. We're still working on the new graphic for it, and also considering a different design path for it. (src)

Priest
Upcoming Penance changes
Some changes to Penance are incoming:

- The first tick will be virtually instant (so overall the channel is now 2 seconds, not 3)
- The mana cost has been cut roughly in half.
- There's a new Discipline talent that will make it more interesting (src)

Warlock
Demonic Circle - The looping and sound issues will be fixed soon, as well as some other random bugs with the ability. (src)

Warrior
Intensify Rage and Precision switched places in the talent tree
As you expressed it Intensify Rage is required for PvP. Therefore 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. (src)

WoW Comic Contest: Honorable Mentions

Here is the next honorable mention from this month's Blizzard comic contest submissions.

WotLK -- Items, Patch before Lich King. Arena info

Zyuu — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:17:03 GMT

Brand new Wrath of the Lich King Items

Torta's Oversized Choker (Neck)
Gwyneth's Runed Dragonwand' (Wand), '
Shimmerthread Girdle' (Cloth | Belt)'
Opposed Stasis Leggings (Cloth | Legs)
Cleric's Linen Shoes' (Cloth | Boots)'
Condor-Bone Chestguards (Mail | Chest)
Grips of the Warming Heart (Mail | Gloves)
Grips of Sculptured Icicles (Plate | Gloves)
Wyrmclaw Battleaxe' (2H Axe) '
Eternally Folded Blade' (1H Sword)'
Projectile Activator' (Gun)'
Gjarngrin Family Signet' (Ring)'
Raiments of the Titans (Cloth | Chest)
Spaulders of the Careless Thief' (Leather | Shoulders)'
Spaulders of Skillful Maneuvers' (Mail | Shoulders)'
Eredormu's Ornamented Chestguard (Plate | Chest)

There will be a patch before Wrath of the Lich King launches

'Posted by: 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. We’ll post the full patch notes as soon as they’re 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.

How will Arenas work after Wrath of the Lich King launches?

Posted by: 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.

Reminder: Olympic Pose Contest

Kody — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:31:41 GMT

We wanted to remind everyone that today is the last day of our Olympic Pose Contest. We've had an incredible number of submissions -- over 1,600 screenshots so far -- and wanted to encourage everyone to get theirs in before 11:59PM tonight to qualify.

This is your chance to win a Worldwide Invitational Goodie Bag card, so to find out how to enter, head over to the contest article and read more! We'll be releasing a list of the winners once they've been contacted, so keep an eye out for that!

We want to thank everyone who has submitted screenshots so far; there are some incredible submissions and it's going to be very difficult to select the 20 winners! If you want to check out all of the screenshots submitted so far, you can do so in our Olympic Pose Contest category.

WotLK -- Level 80 items from dungeons

Zyuu — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:30:23 GMT

Two-Handed Weapons

Throwing Weapons

Hardened Vykrul Throwing Axe

Shields

Cloaks

Idols

none yet

Librams

none yet

Totems

none yet

Cloth

Plate

One-Handed Weapons

War Mace of Unrequited Love
Lifeblade of Belgaristrasz (melee dagger)
Ritualistic Athame (melee dagger)
Meathook's Slicer (melee sword)
Beguiling Scepter (caster mace)

Wands

Brazier Igniter

Bows

Trophy Gatherer

Off-Hand

Amulets

Rings

Trinkets

none yet

Leather

Mail