Goblin Turbo Trike Guide

I finally got my Gobbo Trike last night after a few days of grinding, and it looks really cool. Here are some pics:

Learn how to get your own after the jump.

4.0.3a Thoughts, Hotfixes

Weee, patch day! A totally fun clusterfuck of "Are the servers up? Woot! Now can I stay logged in long enough to do X?" There are plenty of awesome changes that went live last night; the new Org, revamped leveling zones, quests inside dungeons, etc. Of course, there were some broken things too (the mailbox crash was particularly frustrating when I was trying to list auctions), but that's par for the course on a patch day. Anyway, here's a list of what Blizz fixed for us overnight.

• Alterac Valley, Isle of Conquest, and Strand of the Ancients should no longer attempt to place players in a level 80-84 bracket.
• Players should no longer be disconnected from a realm when attempting to take an item out of the mail which has been marked for deletion.
• The title "Champion of [guildname]" can no longer be improperly awarded to players.
• The amount of gold received when converting Battleground Marks of Honor above the honor cap has been reduced to the intended amount.
• Classes
  • Druids
    • The damage done by the following abilities has been reduced by approximately 17%: Mangle (Bear), Maul, Lacerate, Pulverize, Swipe (Bear), Thrash.
  • Hunters
    • A second pet can no longer be summoned when the active pet is dead.
  • Mages
    • Arcane Concentration will not go on internal cooldown when it fails to proc.
    • The damage from Deep Freeze on stun-immune targets is now properly benefitting from Frostburn, including when increased by Mastery Rating on gear.
    • Frostfire Orb now correctly triggers Ignite on critical hits.
    • Pyroblast! made available by Hot Streak will no longer consume Clearcasting.
    • When Scorch is cast by a mage who has Improved Scorch Rank 2, it will no longer consume Clearcasting.
    • Shatter now only increases the chance for Molten Armor's damage to be a critical strike when the target is actually frozen, as intended.
  • Paladins
    • Glyph of Light of Dawn no longer incorrectly reduces the healing of Light of Dawn.
  • Priests
    • Prayer of Healing is now properly healing all of the target's party members, unless they are further than 30 yards away.
    • Twisted Faith no longer gives a 4% damage increase to Mind Flay when Shadow Word: Pain is active on a target.
  • Rogues
    • Envenom now properly scales with Potent Poisons.
  • Warlocks
    • Soul Fire will no longer consume both Empowered Imp and Soulburn when they are active.  It will consume Empowered Imp and leave Soulburn still active.
  • Warriors
    • Shield Slam's damage has been reduced by about 28% at level 15, with less, but still noticeable reductions at higher levels.
• Quests
  • The Wayward Fire Elemental is now properly tracked on the mini-map for the quest "Ice and Fire".
  • Fishing daily quests in Stormwind and Orgrimmar have returned.
  • Players will now reach their flight destination properly for the quest "Fuselight, Ho!"
  • It is no longer possible to use all the charges on the Purified Moonwell Water at a single brazier for the quest "Dousing the Flames of Protection".
  • The tauren quest "Heeding the Call" has been removed from the game and is no longer improperly still being offered to players.

It's The End of the World (of Warcraft) As We Know It

4.0.3a is live TOMORROW! For those of you who don't know, this is the big patch that's changing the world of Azeroth to prepare for Cataclysm. Deathwing is unleashed, and the lands of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms will both be sundered by his arrival. In addition to the world changes, there are a plethora of class changes; DKs got another round of nerfs: DS healing down to 25% of damage taken, min 7% of max health (from 30% and 10%), Death Pact now heals for 25% instead of 40%, Rune Tap heals for 10% down from 15% (and it's glyph is now a 5% heal to the party instead of 10%), and lastly IBF is now 20% base, 50% talented (from 30%, 60%), on a 3m CD up from 2m. Sigh.

Full Patch Notes after the jump.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Sometimes, I play games other than WoW; this may surprise you. Just picked up Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and I'm loving it. It's definitely something that'll keep me occupied til Dec. 7th. Reposting my thoughts on this from a post I've made elsewhere, for my fellow WoW players who might be interested.

Elementals Attacking Org/TB! (Also SW/IF)

The final phase of the elemental invasion has finally begun! Every few hours, Orgrimmar and Thunderbluff will be attacked by elementals. Each city is attacked by two different kinds: Org gets hit with Fire and Earth, while TB is Water and Air. When the event starts, you'll be given a warning that it is about to begin; if you're low level, now's the time to bail. The elementals are level 80, and will not hesitate to slaughter you. Level 80s will be tasked with assisting in the defense of the city by placing sandbags in key locations to protect civilians. Also make sure to pick up a totem from the Earthen Ring guys throughout the city.

Patch 4.0.3 Going Live Tomorrow

This is mostly a minor changes patch, which also gets everything set up for the Shattering, when the world finally changes (that's patch 4.0.3a). Inspects are finally being fixed, which is about the only thing in there that I actually care about. Full notes after the jump.

Elemental Invasion++

The next phase of the Elemental Invasion went live today; there are now a bunch of citizens being detained outside of Orgrimmar.

There are a few more quests to this phase (not just 2 like last time), including an awesome Army of Darkness reference. Klaatu barada...

Still finishing them up; might add to this if there's anything interesting at the end of the line.

"the Insane" Changes, Goblin/Worgen Race Changes

A while back, Blizzard told players who were working on Insane in the Membrane to make sure to finish it soon, as several reputations were going to be removed in Cataclysm, making the Feat of Strength (and it's title) no longer available. Well, they've recently reversed their stance on that. Full details here, but the gist of it is that they're removing the Shen'dralar reputation as a requirement (because that rep will no longer exist); they're also allowing you to grind to exalted with the Bloodsail Buccaneers on Booty Bay Bruisers. If you're holding any of those Dire Maul librams or pristine black diamonds, sell now before everyone realizes they're worthless! This change will go live with the Shattering, patch 4.0.3a.

In unrelated news, Blizzard has stated that you WILL be able to race/faction change into Goblins and Worgen on Day 1 of Cataclysms launch; because of this, there will only be Realm First achievements for classes, not races. If you want to race change from a goblin/worgen into something else, you have to complete the starting area first (Kezan and Gilneas, respectively).

Elemental Invasion (Pre-Cataclysm Event)

The second phase of these quests went live yesterday; for those not playing, this is the event leading up to the Shattering which will change the world of Azeroth. It started a few weeks ago with earthquakes randomly occurring throughout the world. Then last week, the first set of quests went live; there are quest givers in Org and IF tasking players with investigating the cult spreading doomsday roomers and dealing with the invading elementals; two more quests went live this week. Additionally, there is a Feat of Strength available for killing the elementals found throughout the world: Tripping the Rifts. There isn't much to the event now, but as it ramps up it should get a lot more epic!

Diseaseless Blood Tank, GC Comments

I had been considering switching to a Diseaseless tank rotation for a while, and seeing this thread on the official forums reminded me. While tanking heroics I rarely use diseases on trash, preferring instead to drop D&D then BB; by the time you get two diseases up on a target it's likely dead before you even have a third gcd to spread them via pest. Even if you DO get them spread around, you've likely lost hate to your AoEing DPS, even if you had dropped D&D, because diseases generate no snap-aggro.

I haven't tried Diseaseless on bosses yet, simply because putting up diseases is habit after more than a year doing so. I've heard several players talk about how much easier it is, and I can certainly see using a DS instead of refreshing diseases situationally if you need the heal/shield. Here's Ghostcrawler's comment about it:

In the case of "diseaseless Blood," we don't have a problem if tanks choose to sacrifice some of their threat generation for a simpler rotation or other benefits. It doesn't bother us unless ignoring diseases becomes the only reasonable way to play (and with Outbreak available in Cataclysm, applying diseases is even easier). When dps specs were ignoring diseases, we made changes, because the whole DK rotation was based on applying diseases. That's true to a much lesser extent for tanks, but we try to have pretty simple rotation for tanks anyway because they have a lot of other things to worry about and are often having to deal with very dynamic situations compared to what a PvE dps DK might be doing.

 To me, he's stating that they don't really care how people play now, and that if a few tanks don't want to use diseases it's no big deal. However, if everyone stops using them, then they'll make changes; if you read between the lines, he's saying that going Diseaseless is intended to be sub-optimal. If it ever becomes the ideal rotation, then they'll either nerf it or buff diseases. After reading that, I don't see any point to dropping diseases from my rotation as it's clear that we are intended to use them. As GC says, with Outbreak it will only take 1 GCD to apply them, then 1 more to spread them. With Epidemic they actually last quite long, although I won't have that in my spec until Cata hits.

Cataclysm Mounts

As I've stated before, I'm a mount collector. Just got my Green Protodrake last night (see below), which brings me up to 105 mounts! So, let's talk about the mounts they're adding in Cataclysm.

Battle Rez/Soulstone Changes

Coming in Cataclysm, Blizzard is changing how Battle Rez and Soulstone work; you will now only be able to use 1 Battle Rez OR Soulstone (not both) per fight in 10m, 3 total per fight in 25m. With this change, they're rolling the cooldown on Brez back to 10m (from 30). They're also resetting the cooldown on Battle Rez from 30m back to 10m. Now, a lot of people are up in arms about this change; I've even heard it described as the beginning of the end for WoW. However, this change fits in well with the theme of 4.0, which has been the reduction of buff stacking and eliminating the need to bring certain classes or fail.

Additionally, a change like this is NECESSARY to progression raiding. Before this change if you were learning a fight, you want all your resources available for every attempt. That means if you have 2 druids and 1 lock, you want both battle rezzes and the soulstone up for every pull; without them, what's the point in even trying? As a result, many raid groups would have to take 5 minute breaks between wipes to wait for skills to cooldown. But is that fun? Is it cool to schedule 3 hours of raiding but spend an hour of it sitting around waiting for skills to cooldown? Of course not, it's absurd and bad design.

The other problem this addresses is class stacking. In a 10m on live now, you could easily take 3 druids to a raid and get 3 battle rezzes without doubling up on specs or gimping your raid buff composition. Throw in a lock too, and that's 4 combat resurrections; nearly half your raid could die and come back to life. That's too powerful, making druids too "useful" for simply clicking one button and encouraging raid leaders to stack them.

This change is GOOD. It's good for the raiding game, and doesn't affect anyone else since you can still use 5 brezzes in a heroic if you're running with all druids.

Back

Sorry for my absence; Fallout: NV was really addicting. However, I'm back now with regular posts daily on all things Warcraft.