Ding 83!

Just finished up Deepholme and dinged 83. I've done all of Mount Hyjal and some of Vashj'ir so far. MH was a really cool zone, had some great quests. The Bears Up There was one of my favorites, totally hilarious.Vashj'ir isn't as bad as I thought it would be, for a water zone. Still not as good as Hyjal even if the Seahorse mount is sweet. Deepholme was a good time too, very nice sense of flow. The quests are more spread out as well, which prevents camping/fighting for spawns.

Flying down to Uldum now to start work on 84. Also picked up Archaeology so I'm gonna mess around with that a little.

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.

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.

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.

Cataclysm Newbie Thoughts

Since Cataclysm has placed such a large focus on new players and the leveling experience, I decided to use some of my beta time to roll a new guy to see the changes. On my live server I'm at the character cap already, and will have to delete a mule just to roll a goblin so I won't get to see much of the new content on live. So, I started up an undead warrrior; undead because I've always liked the Forsaken lore and warrior because I want to tank.

Very early on I'm impressed with the new level of story the quests show; it isn't all 'kill 10 rats' anymore, you're involved with several NPCs for more than single quests. There are also quests that begin automatically when you kill certain mobs (they don't even require drops), quests that complete and chain right in the field, etc. In Deathknell some of the quests are similar (first you kill undead, then hounds/bats, then spiders) but condensed: you don't need 10 of each type of undead anymore, you need 10 total, collect 3 bat wings instead of 8, etc. Generally they left the key story points of Tirisfal Glades intact while tightening it up, adding some new plot threads, and streamlining your path throughout the zone. Example: Once you hit Brill, you're given quests to go up to Garren's Haunt. After completing the quests there, you're sent directly to Agamand Mills without having to return to Brill to pick up new quests.

Once you're done with Tirisfal you head down to Silverpine, where the focus is on the Worgen. You battle the Worgen directly throughout the whole zone, eventually taking the fight into the city of Gilneas itself. This zone was a lot of fun, and felt almost completely different than it's vanilla version. You're working directly for Sylvannas here, and it really immerses you in the war going on between the Forsaken and the Worgen. Once Cata launches I recommend everyone go quest through this zone just to see an example of quests that put the War in Warcraft.

Cataclysm Beta

I finally got in. ^_^ Copied over a DK, specced for tank and queued up for a heroic! Two wipes later, we're still on the first trash pull. I guess heroics really are going to be hard now? Not sure if want. You only start with blues, so maybe I need to grind some regular dungeons first before testing the heroic stuff. Or maybe we were just doing something wrong. More to come!

Cata Launch 12/7, WoW hits 12m!

We've finally got an official release date: Cataclysm will launch December 7th! At long last!

In other news, people who thought WoW was declining are wrong; we just hit a new peak at TWELVE MILLION players. This new milestone was met mainly by two things: players returning psyched for Cataclysm, and the launch of WotLK in China. Good to see that the game we all love is still growing!

WoW adds ability queue in Cata/4.0

According to this thread on the official forums, there is now an ability queue in WoW. To explain, currently if you push a button during a GCD, nothing happens because of the GCD. With this change, the first button you push during GCD becomes "locked" in queue; it is set to go off as the next skill you use. To some, that might sound cool: "I can decide what skill I'm going to use next earlier! That's awesome."

However, this leaves you unable to react to the ever-changing situation of combat. What happens when a proc goes off enabling/empowering Skill A, but you just queued Skill B? What if you notice you need to re-apply a DoT, but queued another nuke? What do you do in PVP if you queued up a damaging skill, but your target just got CC'd? The case of procs is where this probably hurts the most, as some procs (Bloodsurge) only give you a few seconds to react and the queue locks you out for another 1-1.5 seconds, giving you a smaller window in which to use your proc.

If this was an optional system that you could disable, I would have no problem with it. Some players (or even certain classes) could enable it if they found it beneficial, while others would not have to suffer unwanted changes to core gameplay mechanics. Hopefully Blizzard will add a toggle for this before it goes live.

Death Knight Tier 11 Armor Set Bonuses

Stats are finally out for all of the classes Tier 11 Armor. Unfortunately, models are only available for Warlock, Rogue, and Druid. Here's a link to all of the stats and set bonuses, but let's talk about the Death Knight sets.

DK Tier 11 Tank
Dodge seems to be the favored stat, appearing on 3/5 pieces; parry, hit and mastery all appear on two pieces. The stamina values seem REALLY high; nearly double what the ilvl 277 T10 set has now. Interesting to see that there are no high-armor (with armor in green) pieces this time around; I liked getting more mitigation from certain pieces instead of just avoidance.

The 2 piece bonus is 5% increased DS damage; not impressive but should help with threat, and traditionally the 2p has always done that instead of survivability.

The 4 piece is very nice, 50% longer duration for Icebound Fortitude. Anything that improves our cooldowns I'm a fan of, although I'll miss the T10 4p a lot going into Cata.

DK Tier 11 DPS
Haste is heavily favored for the DPS T11, it appears on 4/5 pieces (all but the legs); since haste now improved rune refresh rate, this looks good. hit rating and mastery appear on two pieces, and crit and expertise appear on one. The lack of expertise could make hitting the cap painful, but we'll see. Also interesting to note is that the DPS T11 has the same amount of stamina as the tank set; this fits with Blizzard's intent to close the gap in health pools between tanks and dps.

The 2 piece bonus makes up for the relative lack of crit rating on the armor: 5% increased crit chance with Death Coil and Frost Strike.

The 4 piece is a more broad dps increase: every time you gain a death rune (from Reaping, Blood of the North, or Blood Tap), you gain +1% attack power, stacking up to 3 times, for 30s.



Hopefully they put the models in for our tier soon!

Dalaran Portals Removed in Cata!

OH NOES THE SKY IS FALLING!! ILL HAVE TO TAKE A 2M FLIGHTPATH TO GET FROM ORG TO TB WAH WAH WAH RAGEQUIT!!1!!!

...

Ahem. The latest beta change has been the removal of the portals to Org/IF/Sw from Dalaran and Shatt; the intention clearly being to force players back into their faction's capital cities instead of having everyone clustered in the previous expansion's content. According to many people online, this is the end of the goddamn world. Personally, I like the change. I've always liked the PVP aspect of Warcraft (and not just WoW), and found the idea of a neutral city that the Horde and Alliance shared (while not being able to kill each other) very silly. It broke immersion (such as it is) seeing tons of humans and orcs just chilling together in a game supposedly about war.

With this change we'll be back in Org, and they'll be back in IF or SW, and encounters with the opposite faction will be more rare (and bloody). All in all a good change to make things feel more worldly. This will also be another buff to mages, as the value of portals will rise considerably.

Cata Launch Delayed (probably)

According to MMO-Champion (who are usually right) Cata has been delayed; it was previously expected to launch in early November but now we're probably looking at an early December ship date. The interesting news is that Blizz intends to have the cataclysm happen and change the old world some time before that. This means we'll be able to mess around in the new world for a few weeks before the expansion actually launches and unlocks level 85, goblins/worgen, etc.

Death Knight Changes - Part Two

Let's talk talents.

Blood
This is now the dedicated tank tree. We gain Bone Shield from the old Unholy tree, Toughness from Frost, a -10% damage debuff added to Blood Boil, Crit Immunity from Blood Presence (bai bai def cap), free Icebound Fortitude, reduced CD on Strangulate, and finally Crimson Scourge; in addition to buffing Blood Boil's damage, if you use Plague Strike (since a single Unholy rune isn't super useful in an AOE tank situation) and the target is already infected with Blood Plague, your next BB is free. Additionally, Rune Tap is now improved by default, and a number of talents now cost less.

We lost...almost all of our DPS talents, as to be expected from a tanking tree. We retain Abom's Might to provide a raid buff (beyond horn), and remain a cooldown-focused tank. All in all, I'm generally pleased, although there honestly weren't that many changes to Blood from a tank perspective. Bone Shield isn't bad as long as it's viewed as another short cooldown instead of something to try and maintain for a damage buff.

Lastly, Blood's Mastery is Blood Shield: whenever you use Death Strike, you gain a shield that absorbs damage equal to 50% of the healing. I like this a lot, as it ensures you get the most out of your DS healing rather than risk some (or all) going to overhealing.

Frost
Frost gains On a Pale Horse (+mounted speed) from Unholy, a 4% increased physical damage taken debuff, a late-tier talent option for 2h Frost, and Pillar of Frost: essentially a tweaked Unbreakable Armor; it still increases Str by 20%, but rather than improve armor it now prevents against movement effects such as knockback. This fits the fact that Frost is now a dedicated dps tree; there is no longer a need for survivability talents. One final change of note is that Howling Blast now (again) has no cooldown.

In addition to losing a ton of passives, Frost loses Acclimation (magic resistance), Toughness, and Deathchill; the latter is the only DPS loss, as it was a free crit for your next Icy Touch, Frost Strike, Howling Blast or Obliterate on a 1m cooldown. Beyond that, the tree lost nothing interesting that was of any use for DPS. Frost's Mastery is Frozen Heart, a simple 20% increase to all Frost damage done. All told, they've done pretty well with Frost imo. Removing the cd on Howling makes the build more AoE friendly, while adding a 2h option (while maintaining dw) gives the tree a lot of versatility.

Unholy
A lot of fun new stuff in the Unholy tree (which is good considering how many of it's old talents ended up in Blood and Frost). First off we've got Resilient Infection, a PVP talent that refreshes your runes when your diseases are dispelled. Next is Runic Corruption, which changes your Runic Empowerment to grant you +50% rune regeneration (instead of simply activating a random rune). Unholy also gains Hysteria, which is now renamed Unholy Frenzy. The final two new Unholy talents are ghoul related: first is Shadow Infusion, which applies a stacking (5x) 10% damage buff on your pet every time you cast DC. Next is Dark Transformation, which consumes all 5 stacks of Infusion to transform your pet for 30 seconds. These two really flesh out the role of the Unholy DK as the Warrior/Necromancer hybrid.

Gone are Bone Shield, On a Pale Horse, Wandering Plague, Crypt Fever/Ebon Plague, and a ton of passives. Surprisingly, Antimagic Zone remains (as does improved AMS), retaining the iconic PVP utility of the Unholy DK. The Mastery for Unholy is 20% increased disease damage; this is as unimpressive as Frost's, but with the rest of the changes it's hard to be too disappointed.


That wraps up my overview of the DK Talent changes coming for Cata. As with all unreleased content, this info is subject to change at any point. If that happens, I'll keep you guys posted.

Death Knight Changes - Part One

Ahh Death Knights...you either hate them, or they're your new main. I fall into the latter. ^_^ I came back to WoW for WotLK primarily because I wanted to try the Death Knight; WoW's first Hero class, and one I had personally hoped for as a Horde exclusive, has lived up to my expectations. From an amazing starter experience, to an unstoppable solo powerhouse while leveling up, to a monster in PVP BGs and WG, to a badass tank; I've had my fun. But let's talk about the future...

New Rune System
The biggest change for DKs in Cata is the revamping of our Rune system. On live now, both runes of any given type (Frost, Blood, or Unholy) refresh at the same time; in Cata only one rune of each type can refresh at one time. This will essentially half the frequency with which we are able to use abilities, barring some front-loading like a rogue or kitty. To compensate for that, Blizz has given us Runic Empowerment. Whenever we dump RP, we have a 45% chance to activate a random rune. The other change (particularly for tanks) is that Rune Strike is no longer 'Next Melee' and is instead an instant strike. This will give us something to do when all our runes are cooling down, and hopefully proc one back for us. Here's a blue post with some more discussion about Runic Empowerment, and it's affect on DPS rotations.

New Skills
As mentioned above, Runic Empowerment is the first of our new skills; Dark Simulacrum is another. It's similar to spell reflect except that it acts as a debuff on the target, triggering when they next cast a spell and copying it's effect for the DK. We also get Necrotic Strike, a PVP skill that absorbs healing that would be done to the target. This is sort of a replacement for the old Plague Strike functionality that removed HoTs. Next we have Outbreak, a 1m cd that applies both of our diseases to a target and consumes no runes or RP. I like this one, because it will help me still be able to drop DnD, get both diseases up, and throw a DS on pull. Finally we get Festering Strike, a B/F skill that extends the duration of Frost Fever, Blood Plague and Chains on the target by 6 seconds. I'm not sure how much use that'll see outside of PVP, but we'll see.

Next time, I'll talk about the talent changes coming for Cata.

Cataclysm Talent Changes (General)

I know I'm a bit late to the party here, but I'd like to state how much I dislike the new, 31 point talents. The amount of freedom and customization the talent system has allowed was one of WoW's best features. It wasn't as deep as the AA system of EQ or EQ2, but still had enough depth that there were always a number of viable builds. Even in the "cookie cutter" specs most builds had 3-5 points of freedom in what they took.

When it was first announced that Cataclysm would have no new talents, but instead 5 more points allowing 51/21/x builds, I was psyched. There were so many cool combos I hoped to try out: Warlock SL/Meta, Rogue h4b/prep, etc. Even if you didn't want another 21p talent, 5 more points adds a TON of freedom to the build. All in all, a greater degree of freedom despite the fact that they weren't adding any 'new' talents.

Then they do an about-face, and say that they're cutting the trees back to Vanilla level, 31p. Furthermore, you MUST spend 31 in a tree before you can even branch out into a 2nd. That fact, combined with the removal of many talents, means that you're basically choosing a spec at level 10 and then fleshing it out with very little choice until level 70 or so. Additionally, you no longer get a talent point every level, which will make each of the games 85 levels feel even less important (removal of spell ranks only compounds this effect). That's not a huge deal to those of us who are already 80, but leveling has already felt tedious, and this is a change for the worse.

All in all I don't see the point in this change; they're dumbing down something that already wasn't difficult. If you're bad and can't make your own talent spec, you can look up a guildmate on the armory, or just check EJ. But apparently, that's too much work for the average WoW-tard.