f13.net

I'm contemplating just rolling up the DK as fast as possible to get in on the new stuff.

You and 10 million other people.

You and 10 million other people.

I think my point is that the class will get overplayed and you'll find few being accepted into groups, etc.  Since 90% of the game occurs after level 70, this would be a concern to me. 

keep in mind this is the "first" hero class, there will be more... doesn't Arch Druid fit perfectly for a Emerald Dream expansion?

I think my point is that the class will get overplayed and you'll find few being accepted into groups, etc.  Since 90% of the game occurs after level 70, this would be a concern to me. 

Yes, but 9 million will play it to 60 and get bored with the Outlands grind again.

You know, Blizzard could probably just release "World of OtherFuckingClasses" and double their income.

Same shit. Elwynn and Stormwind and The Barrens and all of that. Just different classes, and everyone would play it.

I know it's pointless to talk about now, but ideally, simply basing classes more on the Warcraft units would have been the best way to go about it "horizontally".

For example, all mages would essentially still be mages, but each race would have it's own flavor. Orcs would be Shamans, Trolls would be Witch Doctors, Taurens would be Spirit Walkers, Night Elves would be Druids, Humans would be Sorcerers, Undead would be Necromancers.

Or something to that effect. And it pretty much applies to every archetype. And most races have an upgraded hero version of those respective units as well (Archmages, Farseers, Shadowhunters, Liches, etc).

[edit] And I am by no means saying that I could have designed a better game. I'm saying that Blizzard could have. They had all the material to work with right in their own games. Hell, I'd be surprised if this wasn't the original plan....and then some non WC playing guy got involved and fucked it all up.

I get it. You have a boner for the blademaster.

I'm not HRosing, thinking I can fix the current game. The current game is quite fine for who it's addressing. This game, otoh, would definitely not be very loot heavy, leveling would barely exist (as in all of my theoretical games), and it would have not one raid. The endgame would strictly be pvp, with gameplay ideas actually based on Warcraft and not Everquest (peons, camp building, sieges and mortars and vehicles and flight units, race differentials, hero classes). Anyone else would get an automated message to go fuck themselves.

That REALLY sounds like DaoC pre-ToA (minus no leveling  :oh_i_see:) and once again, class balance was(still is probably) a fucking *nightmare*. Doubly so if the base classes are also unique across race let alone the heroic classes.

Seriously stray... it's a little embarassing.

Make the class abilities dynamic on each server. Update them regularly. If Blademasters are winning significantly more encounters than intended, tone them down a bit.

Hmm? I haven't even made a chart yet.

Uh, no you don't get it apparently. I'm just using the blademaster as an example. It has two class defining skills, doesn't take long to describe, and is pretty much the first thing anyone familiar with warcraft thinks of when they hear "hero class".

To address your other points about loot, re-leveling, and whatnot.. Well, humor me for a second here. For one, I'm not talking about World of Warcraft. At all. No point in trying to understand or reference anything I'm saying under any of WoW's current rules.  :grin: Ultimately, I'm just trying to have fun talking about a completely different, theoretical game.

And it wouldn't take much to design a Blademaster class even..
Give me a rogue -- but give me 2 handed swords. And no armor, no raids, no teir 7/8/9 anything. Just a loincloth and a big ass solo attainable quest sword to backstab with. Perfect class right there.  :grin:

The thing that I liked the most was some of the design of the outside zones. It looked like the fact that people will have flying mount right from the start really allowed them to open things up and put in some varied terrain instead of all the flat stuff we're used to. A lot more interesting and awesome because of that.

You will not be able to you your flying mounts in Northrend right off the bat.

I could not find the Blue post in question (link in story is dead) but this article (http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/08/25/blizzard-explains-the-early-wotlk-no-flight-rule) backs it up.

http://files.filefront.com/WotLK+LOL+Preview/;10332878;/fileinfo.html

Very much so.

Oh dear. :(

Awesome IMO. At least a day of people not zooming around on 500000% mounts stealing ore/herbs/mobs, no obnoxious fucking mounts floating outside the new banks, fuck yeah.

WTB Goblins as a playable race.

I believe there was a blue post stating that it would be level 77 before you can use your flying mounts in the new zones. Frankly as much as I will shiver not being able to use my flying mount you get a lot better appreciation of quests and zones when you can't just fly to the mob you want drop kill it and fly away again.

The flying mount just trivializes a lot of content so its for the best that it takes a while to get them back gives you a better appreciation for the funky zones when you have to hoof it around them.

- New line of pet spells called "Smack". Equivalent to Claw except with different name.
- Pin rank 1: 80 Focus, channeled, 20 second cooldown. "Pins the target in place, and squeezes for 20 damage over 12 sec."
- Tendom Rip rank 1: 25 focus, Next melee, 20 second cooldown. "Damages an enemy for 3 to 5 and reduces movement speed by 25% for 8 sec."
- Spore Cloud rank 1: 50 focus, 10 second cooldown. "Inflicts 2 nature damage to nearby enemies every 2 sec for 6 sec and reduces armor by 15%.
- Dust Cloud rank 1: 50 focus, 20 second cooldown. "Kick up an obscuring cloud of dust, lowering the chance for enemies to hit by 30%. Effects last 8 sec."
- Serenity Dust rank 1: 75 focus, 2 minute cooldown. "Heals the pet for 510 over 15 sec."
- Bad Attitude rank 1: 25 focus, 3 minute cooldown. "Snap back for 5 damage at any target that strikes you for the next 2 min."
- Nether Shock rank 1: 30 focus, 20 yard range, 6 second cooldown. "Instantly lashes an enemy for 17 to 19 Shadow damage. Also interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 1 sec."
- Ravage rank 1: 80 focus, 1 minute cooldown. "Violently attack an enemy for 4 to 6, stunning it for 2 sec."
- Sonic Blast rank 1: 80 focus, 1 minute cooldown. "Emits a piercing shriek, inflicted 4 to 6 physical damage and stunning the target for 2 sec."
- wing Buffet rank 1: 40 focus, 30 second cooldown. "Blasts the target for 4 to 6 damage and knocking it back."
- Snatch rank 1: 40 focus, 1 minute cooldown. "Grab the enemy's weapon with your talons, disarming them for 10 sec."

If I had a hunter, I'd want a monkey, regardless of stats or abilities.

If I had a hunter, I'd want a monkey, regardless of stats or abilities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8avOiTUcD4Y (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8avOiTUcD4Y)

For all of the hunters who aren't happy topping the damage meters, some new pet abilities have been found in the alpha.

- Nether Shock rank 1: 30 focus, 20 yard range, 6 second cooldown. "Instantly lashes an enemy for 17 to 19 Shadow damage. Also interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 1 sec."

For all of the hunters who aren't happy topping the damage meters, some new pet abilities have been found in the alpha.

Tall striders actually are pretty decent for powers at this time now that they got dash. They are decent all around pets having a special ability is nice but there are some pet types that have zip for abilities not even bite and dash.

Shadow dance only lasts 9 secs and the stealth pop is every 3s, so its not too horrible.  The changes seem aimed at giving rogues a strong chance against warriors though, so once more the question becomes, "what counters a rogue?"  Is Blizzard abandoning RPS-style pvp design finallly, or is another class being buffed up to be the anti-rogue since supported warriors are nearly the anti-everything.

All this wotlk info chasing has had a bad side for me, my acc got hacked last night.

Thankfully the response from Blizzard has been excellent. I reported it only a couple of hours ago and already most/all of the items have been restored to me. The only thing I'm waiting on now is some gold.

All this wotlk info chasing has had a bad side for me, my acc got hacked last night.

Thankfully the response from Blizzard has been excellent. I reported it only a couple of hours ago and already most/all of the items have been restored to me. The only thing I'm waiting on now is some gold.

Just curious...why is it ok to post WOTLK alpha skills and discuss it, but bad to do the same with WAR?  Or are they actually releasing this alpha info?

What the hell were you doing? Stop using IE, or start using noscript or adblock+ in Firefox. Or use Opera since no one knows it exists. :P

Just curious...why is it ok to post WOTLK alpha skills and discuss it, but bad to do the same with WAR?  Or are they actually releasing this alpha info?

I use firefox. It might have been the flash thing that got me. I dunno.

Back to WotLK spoilers, latest alpha patch apparently went live (according to the usual sources) and has a bunch of spell & talent changes, Stormwind harbour about 90% complete, new zep towers outside Org/UC...and a new deathknight mount.

Words can not express my love for the new talent Murder Spree.

I'm sorry but the Rogue talents blow the Warrior talents OUT OF THE FUCKING WATER.

Might have to finally get my rogue to 70. They have so much more control over a fight. Warriors are just spamstring and pray for crits.

Unless you're a combat rogue

Name: Stay of Execution
Description: When you have less than 35% health, all damage taken is reduced by -15% and you are treated as if you are at full health.

 :oh_i_see:

I think we can all agree that there's going to be blood by the bucketload.

Which is awesome.

Vigilance (new) - Focus your protective gaze on a friendly target, increasing their chance to dodge by 5%. In addition, any time they are hit by an attack your Taunt cooldown is refreshed. Lasts until cancelled. This effect can only be on one target at a time.

Actually, I see Sudden Death as the counter to Stay of execution - with the Sudden Death proc you can execute regardless of the target's current health.

i.e.
Sudden Death (new) - Your melee critical hits have a 10%/20/30% chance of allowing the use of Execute regardless of the target's health state.

Check out:
Sudden Death (new) - Your melee critical hits have a 10%/20/30% chance of allowing the use of Execute regardless of the target's health state.

Can imagine the screenshots, 3k MS, 2K white melee then 10K execute for death in 2 seconds - you dont want to be anywhere near a warrior with full rage bar...

I'm not claiming to be a good arena warrior, in fact I am a bad one. However I will say that one of the first things I was told is that execute is very often NOT your friend. Because a warrior who dumped all his rage into execute and left his target at 2% hp now has no rage to intercept, pummel or snare him, so if said target happens to walk out of melee range or w/e you are screwed and generally he will be fully healed or long gone before your slow rageless ass can do jack squat about it.

Hex - Transforms the enemy into a random critter, reducing the target's movement speed by 75%. While moving, the hexed target cannot attack or cast spells. Only one target can be hexed at a time. Only works on Humanoids and Beasts.



While certainly leaps and bounds superior to having no CC at all. It's really just a fancy snare from the wording.



I have a hard time seeing Cripple going in as is currently.

If it's anything like NPC Hex, you get the "wander around aimlessly" bit like polymorph.

The NPC Hex is just Polymorph with a different name. This Hex specifically mentions movement speed reduction, which would be moot if it was just Poly 2.0. There is also no mention of 'heals the target while hexed' like Poly, nor that it breaks on damage, which would make it flat out superior to Poly if it just turned you into a critter to wander around.

It's much more similar to a Mages Slow then Polymorph, outside of the fact you'll be a chipmunk or frog while Hexed.


Of course blah blah Alpha blah change blah etc.  :oh_i_see:

The only thing that is believable is that hunters have not had anything leaked yet, as blizzard still doesn't have a single person who understands jack shit about the class on the dev team.

Hex - Transforms the enemy into a random critter, reducing the target's movement speed by 75%. While moving, the hexed target cannot attack or cast spells. Only one target can be hexed at a time. Only works on Humanoids and Beasts.

While certainly leaps and bounds superior to having no CC at all. It's really just a fancy snare from the wording.

I have a hard time seeing Cripple going in as is currently.

"Viper sting needs a cooldown that makes sense in regards to the length of the sting" kind of stuff.

Siege Vehicles
The Demolisher

    * The Demolisher has both short and long range attacks
    * It is meant to bombard players and buildings from a long distance, it's also equipped with a ram to siege buildings.
    * It can hold up to 3 passengers, passengers are exposed and can be targeted individually. However, players can cast while the vehicle is moving if they're in it.


Forsaken Catapult

    * The catapult is faster than the demolisher but its range is slightly lower.
    * It does slightly less damage.
    * It cannot hold any pessenger.


The Siege Engine

    * This is the siege weapon with the longest range.
    * The gunner is sitting in the turrent and has full control of the turret.
    * The driver is only moving the vehicle.
    * The passengers in this vehicle are fully protected but can't shoot other enemies.
    * It's also got a very powerful ramming attack


Flying machine

    * Flying Machines can bomb enemies, they're swift but very vulnerable to anti-air attacks.


Goblin Shredder

    * The shredder is an anti-air vehicle.
    * It will use anti-air rockets, they're long range homing missiles.
    * This is a personal armor suit, if the vehicle is destroyed the player just jumps out and keep fighting on his own.
    * You can use your sawblade as close range melee attacks.
    * The shredder can jump into the air just like rocket boots for players. This can also be used to jump over walls.
    * The shredder is very vulnerable to siege damage.

    * There will be a 10/25 players mode for each raid dungeon.
    * Heroic dungeons will be made slightly easier, at least devs are going to make sure you don't necessarily need a specific class like a prot warrior to complete it.
    * Some dungeons were too long in Burning Crusade and completing a dungeon shouldn't take more than an hour.
    * Attunements to enter Heroic instances will be removed.
Reputation

    * You will be able to earn reputation toward a specific faction by becoming its "champion", for example by wearing a Cenarion Circle tabard while running Hellfire Ramparts you will earn reputation for both Honor Hold/Thrallmar and Cenarion Circle. Obviously tabards reputation requirements will be changed to something like friendly/honored.

    * Most of the shaman totems, Unleashed Rage, and Battle Shout are some of the buffs changed in WotLK to affect the whole raid instead of the party.
    * There is a plan to give player access to two talent specs to switch between them without having to respec all the time. More details in the future.

Hunter

    * All kind of pets will have their own talent tree. A tanking talent tree, a DPS talent tree, and an utility talent tree. Each kind of pet family will have its own talent tree and its own unique ability.
    * The shot clipping will be removed from Steady Shot, you'll be able to use it without "interrupting" your autoshot. Hunters will be able to just smash their button.
    * There are going to be new pets in WotLK.
    * The skill points for each pets are being changed to the new "Pet talents" and will disappear.

C'mon now, the pet talent thing is probably going to be awesome. I look forward to messing with it on my hunter. Of course, I've always thought hunters were rad and the people whining about how omg the class sux so bad waaaaah were crazy.

What are we doing to reassure ourselves that this is right ?  Most of those changes look like pie in the sky shite.

Here's my big problem.  They really really shouldn't have held back so many of these changes for the expansion.  I'd still be playing if they had kept patching in all this good stuff at a regular pace.

Here's my big problem.  They really really shouldn't have held back so many of these changes for the expansion.  I'd still be playing if they had kept patching in all this good stuff at a regular pace.

Here's my big problem.  They really really shouldn't have held back so many of these changes for the expansion.  I'd still be playing if they had kept patching in all this good stuff at a regular pace.

Damn it.  I actually thought those changes were for upcoming patches.  These are tied to the expansion?  That's bullshit.  All of those things listed need to be implemented now.

My assumption is that people aren't going to give a crap about heroics.  As soon as the expansion comes out, the climb to 80 will begin or the "I'm starting a DK at 55" will start.  Unless they are just going to continue to use badges for uber items in the new lands, I assume the green drops from standard level 75 mobs will be better than anything I have now.

I want the faction points now.  I won't give a crap after the expansion.

Do they really think some large group of people will just say, "Screw this leveling crap.  I'm going to continue to play the level 70 game?"  I don't get it.  If you are planning on improving the game for the level 70 crowd, do it well before the expansion while people actually give a shit about that portion of the game.

Damn it.  I actually thought those changes were for upcoming patches.  These are tied to the expansion?  That's bullshit.  All of those things listed need to be implemented now.

My assumption is that people aren't going to give a crap about heroics.  As soon as the expansion comes out, the climb to 80 will begin or the "I'm starting a DK at 55" will start.  Unless they are just going to continue to use badges for uber items in the new lands, I assume the green drops from standard level 75 mobs will be better than anything I have now.

I want the faction points now.  I won't give a crap after the expansion.

Do they really think some large group of people will just say, "Screw this leveling crap.  I'm going to continue to play the level 70 game?"  I don't get it.  If you are planning on improving the game for the level 70 crowd, do it well before the expansion while people actually give a shit about that portion of the game.

That was dumb.

Care to elaborate Troll?

Alleged spoiler referring to what is going to (presumably) be the in-game WotLK launch event: http://xs.to/xs.php?h=xs329&d=08273&f=wait_what184.jpg
 :ye_gods:

Would Orgrimmar cease to exist? Or just be a pile of rubble? That seems really  :ye_gods: , since Org is used heavily by the horde.




Like Simond said, I could totally see Darnassus being turned into a crater and no one even noticing for a week.

Would Orgrimmar cease to exist? Or just be a pile of rubble? That seems really  :ye_gods: , since Org is used heavily by the horde.

However, they bring very little beyond DPS and a touchy, non-recastable CC to 5 and 10-mans.

Care to elaborate Troll?

Well given past "invasions" of undead I expect the razing of a city will involve 1 maybe 2 elite mobs that run into the city every hour only to get brutally slain buy the guards or bored people at the AH. The rest of the invasion will mill around outside the city thinking menacing thoughts.

Dude I hope they fix Shadow Priests.  Even read a dev comment about how you "never see shadow priests in top end pvp."  I guess the problem is we'd be too uber with the mana and health regen if our damage was too competitive.  We have zero survivability.  The changes to the talent treet look prety decent.  They appear to have nerfed our mana regen and buffed our damage.  We'll see. 

It got to hopeless in my 2v2 arena team that I just rerolled a dranei mage.  He's pretty cool but I stalled out at like level 40.

Shadow priest is not a class, fuck off and die.

This post brought to you by "I wish hybrids would shut the fuck up about their pet spec and play the spec that works when they PVP".

EDIT: I am quite happy to note that this post was my 2000 post, it is a good post and worthy of that distinction.

They want people to buy the expansion.

THEY'RE DOING A BETA. 2 IS KINDA THE POINT OF THE BETA OMG?

Not sure why you are yelling or acting like a valley girl.  Beta's do not guarantee complete success.  In fact, they rarely do.

schild says I should try to be nice, so can you stop being fucking stupid?

You are dumb

No really, he was right at the first instance.  You are dumb and until your little whine fest here I hadn't bothered to read anything you wrote for several months - a mistake I'll not soon make again.

The people still paying their subs will not see any more resources dumped on them than is necessary to keep the servers up and the players from hacking each other's computers through the WoW client.  If they churn or not has been demonstrated to be irrelevant based on the historic model of The Burning Crusade expansion.  Blizzard knows they'll be back, and keep coming back, until World of DiabloWarStarCraftEmporium is ready for mass consumption.

One doesn't increase revenues by dumping good money after bad e.g. fighting off attrition and churn.  One increases revenues by putting new product on the shelves and pulling in new customers (much of the churned wow subscription base is already waiting on the expansion no matter what you do in the interim).  Keeping the potential churners engaged by inviting them to the Beta provides playtesting while keeping those subscriptions ticking over (even the chance to win a beta slot will be enough for some to stick around - as silly as that is).  Writing this post just cost me more than my WoW subscription for the month.  I save enough money to keep playing WoW regardless of what WoW does every time I avoid responding to a stupid post.  So really, why would Blizzard throw money into current dynamics when everything will reset with the expansion?  They don't charge a high enough monthly subscription to make these lame duck months worth fighting for retention.

Now if they started locking subscriptions in for a 2 year contract...

No really, he was right at the first instance.  You are dumb and until your little whine fest here I hadn't bothered to read anything you wrote for several months - a mistake I'll not soon make again.

[...]  I'm not sure what has gotten posters here so agitated and trollish.  Boring workdays?  [...]

random random

So you can essentially double your DPS. That's........slighly OP.

B) IIRC Runic power is how you do all your good tricks if you are a DK, and you have to use it all up for this spell, so your DPS would not be doubled.

   
Degeneration
Rank 1
Instantly attack the target, dealing 60% weapon damage and inflicting a disease dealing 91 over 21 sec. Any existing heal over time spells on the target become corrupted, dramatically increasing the damage done by the disease and removing the healing effect. Stacks up to 3 times.

WoW head has the  talents up http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent

Minus Hunters and Paladins. Nothing new as far as I can see, but you don't have to go fishing through all the leak sites for them anymore.

Some of these seem bugged.

Max range (Heals, Talented Hunters/Mages) is 40yards.

Runic power is not really like that. There are only a few DK abilities that use runic power, and most of them consume all of it. On top of that only few of them are straight damage abilities. The comparison to using all your rage and mana are not apt, nor really is energy.

WoW head has the  talents up http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent

Minus Hunters and Paladins. Nothing new as far as I can see, but you don't have to go fishing through all the leak sites for them anymore.

What I'm interested to see is whether deep-disc will now become a raid-viable spec. A lot of the new talents look rather nifty, the only problem is the large number of filler talents you need to wade through in the middle of the tree to get there. Grace seems pretty damn powerful, especially when you have other healers to take advantage of it. Deep disc priests look like they'll be mainly using penance, with GHeal and Flash Heal during the cooldown, probably as tank healers. Depending on the duration of grace I wonder whether we'll have priest + druid teams keeping up lifebloom and grace on 2-3 targets.

I have a feeling deep-disc will be more like Ret Paladins or Survival Hunters. One per raid will be very very useful, but beyond that the benefits fall off. We'll have to see what the healing throughput on Penanace is like, because deep-disc priests are always going to lag significantly behind deep-holy on every other heal. I'm thinking most raids will probably have 1 penance, 1 CoH and a shadowpriest as standard, maybe adding an extra SPriest or CoH priest as availability dictates.

I can't imagine a 10 man having 3 priests.

Looking at those DK talents, every single DK is going to put at least 5 points into Blood for 5/5 Bladed Armour.

To be honest, I'm rather underwhelmed. I see a viable 5-man tank and a formidable PVP class, but not a very good raiding class.

Alpha is over.

And no hunter/ pally stuff patched in before it ended.  I'm sure that won't lead to any long-term problems.  :awesome_for_real:

Just cancel hunters in the expansion and give the players an equal level DK.

Problem solved.

I think this whole thread gets nuked, doesn't it ??

Everything in this thread can be found either here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=1793231&sid=1

Or directly linked to by posts in that forum that do not ever get deleted.  I can't see why you'd nuke this thread, it's pretty clear that Blizzard wants the info out there so they can force everyone to implement shitty half finished versions of the same systems and then laugh as they drive to the bank!

According to those rules, if it's possible that it's under NDA, then it gets nuked, even if Blizzard chooses not to enforce the NDA, and even if no one what is actually written in the NDA.

* If you are thinking about posting something that's not publically% available knowledge (i.e. that would break the NDA) DON'T, even if you haven't accepted any NDA agreement yourself.
...
% "Publically available knowledge" includes:

* Stuff the developer/publisher releases about the game (e.g. EA or Mythic in the case of WAR)
* Stuff on the main pages of reputable Web-sites (they won't risk posting NDA-breaking stuff for fear of being cut off by developer/publisher in the future)
* Stuff you've seen actually playing the game while not under an NDA (e.g. at public gaming shows)

Stuff that might not be publically available knowledge includes:

* Stuff you read about in forums
* Stuff you read about in Joe-random blog

Besides, Blizzard doesn't care enough about a niche site like f13 to hand out free beta accounts, so it's not like schild and trippy have to kiss Blizzard's asses.

...and for paladins I think they are just being very careful not to reveal the talents because of the shitstorm it will cause.

While Wrath of the Lich King will improve many of World of Warcraft’s existing features, it will also introduce plenty of brand-new ones to keep the game fresh and interesting. One of these new features is sure to suit a wide range of play styles: achievements. These self-contained goals will offer new challenges, satisfy goal-oriented players, allow others to see your accomplishments in World of Warcraft -- and are just plain fun.

World of Warcraft’s achievements system will launch with more than 500 individual achievements covering every aspect of gameplay, including world exploration, PvE, PvP, professions, and character development; from the purely whimsical to the truly epic, there will be something for everyone. Some achievements come with in-game rewards such as tabards, vanity pets, and titles. All of these rewards are purely cosmetic and just for fun, but you’ll certainly stand out when you proudly display them.

And don’t fret about running out of achievements anytime soon. The list is easily expandable, so you can expect additional achievements with each new World of Warcraft content update.

Interesting, I wonder whether they'll be character or account-based.

I guess, or maybe they'll have a mix. Account-based achievements would allow for a bigger range of achievements (level one of every class to level 10, 20, 30. Get at least artisan in every crafting skill etc) whithout being ridiculous.

The really important bit of info, is the confirmation on the barber shop.  :grin:

I had seen some stuff mentioned about achievements before but I was not putting to much faith into that being added but apparently it is going in. Its going to be pretty funny the moment a long time character logs in once WOTLK goes live for the huge spam of achievements being shouted out to the guild and everybody in the area.

Personally I hope there is some retroactive achievement called glutton for punishment for those who finished their teir .5 quest and killed valthalak. That was a long expensive very difficult for its time quest for minimal reward.

That was confirmed a while ago, along with "learn new dance moves," I thought.

According to those rules, if it's possible that it's under NDA, then it gets nuked, even if Blizzard chooses not to enforce the NDA, and even if no one what is actually written in the NDA.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King: Beta

Welcome to the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Beta Test. The list below contains information on the current available content for testing and general information. This information is subject to change. Alpha testers should note that your characters have been temporarily locked out. In a few weeks time, we will unlock these characters and you will be able to continue to level them. Please visit the Beta forums to submit feedback and discuss the expansion development with others.

General

o The continent of Northrend is now available! To travel there, visit one of four transportation masters in either Orgrimmar, Undercity, Stormwind Harbor,or Menethil Harbor.
o The floating magical city of Dalaran is now available!
o The Barber Shop has been implemented and you can now visit one of the Barber Shops in the major cities to change your appearance.
o The all new Achievement System has been implemented.
o Transportation between Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra can be found at the Tuskarr villages in those zones.
o The level cap is currently set to 77.
o Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating, and Haste Rating now modify both melee attacks and spells.
o Spellpower:
+ All items and effects which grant bonuses to spell damage and spell healing are being consolidated into a single stat, Spellpower. This stat will appear with the same values found on items which grant “increased spell damage and healing” such as on typical Mage and Warlock itemization.
+ For classes which do not heal, they should see no change in the character sheet other than new tooltip wording.
+ Healing characters will see their bonus healing numbers on the character sheet decrease, however, all healing spells have been modified to receive more benefit from spellpower than they received from bonus healing, with a net effect of no change to the amount healed by their spells. Some talents have had to be rebalanced to accommodate this change, but the amount healed will remain roughly the same. In addition, some talents will provide only healing spell power.
o NPC Transportation Locations
+ Horde:
# Undercity to Vengeance Landing (Howling Fjord)
# Orgrimmar to Warsong Hold (Borean Tundra)
+ Alliance:
# Menethil Harbor to Valgarde (Howling Fjord)
# Stormwind Harbor to Valiance Keep (Borean Tundra)

Known Issues

o The current patch notes are incomplete, but will be more progressively more comprehensive in each patch.

World Environment Zones

o The following zones are available for testing: Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, and Grizzly Hills, Sholazar Basin, and Zul'Drak.

Dungeons

o The following dungeons are available for testing:
+ Howling Fjord: Utgarde Keep (70-72)
+ Borean Tundra: The Nexus (70-72)
+ Dragonblight: Azjol-Nerub (72-74)
+ Grizzly Hills: Drak’Tharon Keep (74-76)
+ Storm Peaks: The Halls of Stone (77-79)

Classes

o All Classes are available for play. Spells and talents will be available for testing past 70.
o The Death Knight Hero class is now available for play.
+ Death Knights will now start with 0 talent points at level 55.
+ Creating a new Death Knight will start you at level 55 in Eastern Plaguelands.
+ The Death Knight start zone, Acherus, the Ebon Hold, is fully implemented and is located in the Eastern area of Eastern Plaguelands.

Druid

o Brambles (Balance): Now increases the damage done by your Treants, and also damage caused from your Treants and Barkskin has a 5/10/15% chance to Daze the target for 3 sec.
o Celestial Focus (Balance): The stun proc now works with Starfall.
o Entangling Roots: Can now be used indoors.
o Faerie Fire (Feral): Now an 11-point talent, down from being a 21-point talent.
o Feral Charge (Feral) is now a 21-point talent, up from being a 11-point talent.
o Feral Charge (Feral): Can now be used in Cat form.
o Feral Instinct (Feral) no longer increases threat generated in Bear form, but now increases damage done by your Swipe ability by 5/10/15%.
o Focused Starlight (Balance): Now also works with Starfall.
o Force of Nature (Balance): Cooldown reduced to 2 minutes, down from 3.
o Hurricane: No longer has a cooldown (was 1 minute).
o Improved Faerie Fire (Feral): Now also works with spell hit, in addition to ranged and melee hit %.
o Improved Mark of the Wild (Restoration): Now a 2-point talent, down from a 5-point talent.
o Improved Tranquility (Restoration): Now also reduces the cooldown of your Tranquility spell by 25/50%.
o Mangle (Feral): Now increases the damage done by Maul in addition to Shred.
o Moonglow (Balance): Now also works with Starfall.
o Moonkin Form (Balance) no longer increases your attack power or causes you to regenerate mana off melee attacks, but now has a chance to cause you to instantly regenerate 2% of your total mana every time you critically hit with a spell.
o 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.
o Nature's Grace (Balance): Now also reduces the global cooldown of your Wrath spell by 50% while in effect.
o Nature's Grasp (Balance): Can now be used and can proc indoors.
o Nature's Reach (Balance): Now also reduces threat generated by Balance spells by 15/30%.
o New Spell: Revive - Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead target to life with health and mana. Cannot be cast when in combat. (Ranks 1-7 added)
o Omen of Clarity (Restoration): Now a passive spell. Now also works for spells (healing and damage). Proc rate is roughly 6% with a 10 second internal cooldown.
o Primal Tenacity (Feral) now reduces damage while stunned by 5/10/15%, and reduces the duration of fear effects by 5/10/15%.
o Remove Curse can now be used in Tree of Life form.
o Soothe Animal can now be used on Dragonkin as well as Beasts.
o Soothe Animal is now instant cast.
o Subtlety (Restoration): Now a 3-point talent, down from a 5-point talent. Also moved to Tier 2, up from Tier 3. Also now only reduced threat for Restoration spells, and reduces the chance that your healing over time spells (Lifebloom, Regrowth and Rejuvenation) will be dispelled, rather than all Druid spells. Threat management for Balance can now be found in the Balance tree, within Nature's Reach.
o Survival of the Fittest (Feral): Increased to 2/4/6%, up from 1/2/3%.
o The mana regeneration penalty when in Bear Form, Dire Bear Form and Cat Form has been removed.
o Tranquil Spirit (Restoration) now also includes Nourish.
o Tree of Life (Restoration): 30% snare penalty has been removed.
o Tree of Life (Restoration): Can now cast Dispel Curse.
o Tree of Life (Restoration): You can now cast all Restoration spells (Healing Touch) in the form, but Tree of Life now only reduces the mana cost of your healing over time spells (Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, Regrowth and Flourish) by 20%.
o Vengeance (Balance): Now also works with Starfall.

Hunter

o All pet families now have one unique ability. New abilities have been added for families such as bears and sporebats.
o Aspects now no longer cost mana.
o Avoidance, Dash / Dive and Cobra Reflexes are now pet talents instead of pet skills.
o Bite now has no cooldown, does the same damage and costs the same Focus as Claw, so works as a Focus dump.
o Clever Traps (Survival) has been renamed "Trap Mastery."
o Concussive Barrage (Marksmanship) - Can now proc from Volley attacks.
o Deterrence (Survival) - Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, and now also increases your chance to resist spells by 60%. Now has a new spell effect.
o Every hunter pet can learn Growl, Cower and either Bite or Claw (never both).
o Hunter pets can now learn talents in one of three trees depending on family. Pets gain talent points starting at level 20 and earn an extra talent point every 4 levels.
o If a hunter tames a pet that is more than five levels beneath than the hunter's level, then the pet jumps to five levels beneath than the hunter's level.
o Improved Feign Death (Survival): Now also reduces damage taken during Feign Death by 15/30%.
o Loyalty, Training Points and the hunter Beast Training button no longer exist. Hunter pets can now learn all skills at their level. They will get new ranks automatically as they gain levels.
o Master Tactician (Survival) - Chance to proc increased to 10%, up from 6%.
o Monster Slaying (Survival) and Humanoid Slaying (Survival) has been combined into "Improved Tracking".
o New Talent - Improved Tracking (Survival) - Increases all damage done to targets that are being tracked 1/2/3/4/5%.
o Steady Shot now uses ammo. In result, its bonus damage has been slightly reduced. Players can notice a damage increase based upon what ammo they use.
o Surefooted (Survival) now reduces the duration of movement impairing effects by 10/20/30% (instead of resist % chance).
o Trap Mastery (Survival) has been removed.

Mage

o Arcane Focus (Arcane) is now 3 ranks and increases chance to hit and reduces mana cost of Arcane spells by 1/2/3%.
o Counterspell now costs 9% of base mana.
o Frost Armor, Ice Armor, Mage Armor and Molten Armor are no longer Magic effects and cannot be dispelled.
o Invisibility now makes the caster invisible after 3 seconds, reduced from 5 seconds.
o Magic Attunement (Arcane) now also increases the range of your Arcane spells by 3/6 yards.
o Polymorph now costs 12% of base mana.
o Portal spells now cost 18% of base mana.
o Prismatic Cloak (Arcane) now also reduces the fade time of Invisibility by 1/2 seconds.
o Slow Fall now costs 6% of base mana.
o Teleport spells now cost 9% of base mana.

Paladin

o All Auras now affect all party and raid members within the area of effect.
o Anticipation (Protection) moved to tier 1, now increases chance to dodge by 1/2/3/4/5%.
o Avenger's Shield (Protection) cast time reduced to .5 seconds, duration increased to 10 seconds.
o Avenging Wrath no longer causes Forebearance, damage increase reduced to 20%, now increases healing done by 20%.
o Blessing of Freedom renamed Hand of Freedom. Only one Hand spell can be on the target per paladin at any one time. Now costs 6% of base mana.
o Blessing of Light and Greater Blessing of Light removed. Their effects have been folded into all relevant abilities.
o Blessing of Protection renamed Hand of Protection. Only one Hand spell can be on the target per paladin at any one time. All ranks now cost 6% of base mana.
o Blessing of Sacrifice renamed Hand of Sacrifice, is now only 1 rank and transfers 20% of the damage taken to the caster, duration reduced to 12 seconds, cooldown increased to 2 minutes. Only one Hand spell can be on the target per paladin at any one time. Now costs 6% of base mana.
o Blessing of Salvation renamed Hand of Salvation, now reduces total threat on the target by 2% per second for 10 seconds while also reducing all damage and healing done by 10%. Only one Hand spell can be on the target per paladin at any one time. Now costs 6% of base mana.
o Conviction (Retribution) now increases critical chance with all spells and melee attacks.
o Divine Intellect (Holy) moved to tier 2, increases total Intellect by 3/6/9/12/15%.
o Divine Intervention cooldown reduced to 20 minutes.
o Divine Protection and Divine Shield now cost 3% of base mana.
o Divine Purpose (Retribution) now reduces chance to be hit by spells and ranged attacks by 1/2/3%.
o Divine Strength (Holy) moved to tier 1 in the Protection tree.
o Greater Blessing of Salvation removed.
o Hammer of Justice now costs 3% of base mana.
o Hammer of Wrath is now considered a Retribution spell, moved from Holy, mana cost reduced, missile speed increased, now usable on targets below 35% health.
o Healing Light (Holy) moved to tier 2.
o Holy Shield (Protection) cooldown reduced to 8 seconds.
o Holy Shock (Holy) range changed to 20/40 yards when used on enemies/friends respectively, cooldown reduced to 6 seconds.
o Holy Wrath is now instant cast, causes a 3 second stun, cooldown reduced to 30 seconds, radius reduced to 10 yards.
o Illumination (Holy) moved to tier 3.
o Improved Concentration Aura (Protection) moved to the Holy tree.
o Improved Concentration Aura moved from the Protection tree to tier 4 in the Holy tree.
o Improved Devotion Aura (Protection) moved to tier 4, reduced to 3 ranks, now increases armor of Devotion Aura by 17/34/50% and increases all healing done to units affected by Devotion Aura by 1/2/3%.
o Improved Hammer of Justice (Protection) now reduces cooldwon by 10/20/30 secs.
o Improved Righteous Fury (Protection) threat bonus folded into base spell, talent still reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%.
o Improved Sanctity Aura (Retribution) renamed Sanctified Retribution, now causes all units affected by Retribution Aura to cause 2% more damage.
o Improved Seal of Righteousness (Holy) moved to tier 1, renamed XXX, now affects Seal of Righteousness, Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption.
o Improved Seal of the Crusader (Retribution) renamed Heart of the Crusader and the effects now apply to all Judgement spells.
o Judgement of Justice will no longer prevent Fear effects, only prevent NPCs from fleeing (e.g. at low health).
o Lay on Hands no longer drains all mana, cooldown reduced to 20 minutes.
o Pure of Heart (Holy) reduced to 2 ranks, now reduces duration of Curse and Disease effects by 25/50%.
o Redoubt (Protection) moved to tier 2.
o Repentance (Retribution) mana cost changed to 9% of base, duration increased to 1 minute (10 second PvP duration), now usable against Demons, Dragonkin, Giants, Humanoids and Undead.
o Retribution Aura damage increased and now gains damage based on Holy spell power.
o Righteous Fury now increases threat caused by Holy damage by 90%.
o Sanctified Light (Holy) now also increases the critical chance of Holy Shock.
o Sanctity Aura (Retribution) removed.
o Seal of Justice/Judgement reduced to 1 rank with all the effects of the previous rank 2, the Judgement effect no longer prevents Fear.
o Seal of the Crusader has been removed. The effects of Judgement of the Crusader have been folded into all relevant abilities.
o Seal of Vengeance damage over time effect duration increased to 18 seconds.
o Spiritual Focus (Holy) moved to tier 1.
o Stoicism (Protection) moved to tier 2, now reduces duration of Stun effects by 10/20/30% and reduces chance your spells will be resisted by 10/20/30%.
o Toughness (Protection) moved to tier 3.
o Turn Undead (ranks 1 and 2) removed. Turn Evil now granted at level 24, mana cost changed to 9% of base.
o Unyielding Faith (Holy) moved to tier 2.

Priest

o Circle of Healing (Holy): Now works on any targets in the caster's raid, and is now a "smart" heal and chooses the lowest health targets to heal first within it's range. Also now has a 6 second cooldown. Also no longer will heal summoned Snakes from Hunter's Snake Trap.
o Enlightenment (Discipline): Now also gives 1% spell damage and 1% heal per point.
o Focused Will (Discipline): Now increases healing effects on you by 3/4/5%, down from 4/7/10%.
o Force of Will (Discipline): This talent now increases your spell damage by a flat amount, rather than increasing your spells by a %. (Now increases school %, rather than selected spells damage %). In other words, your spell damage gained from this talent is now reflected on your character sheet, rather than the skill tool-tips.
o Holy Fire: Cast time reduced to to 2 seconds, down from 3.5. Damage increased roughly 60%. Duration for the damage over time effect reduced to 7 seconds, down from 10. Holy Fire now has a 10 second cooldown.
o Improved Inner Fire (Discipline) - Now also increases the bonus healing on your Inner Fire spell by 10/20/30%.
o Improved Shadow Word: Pain (Shadow) - Now increases damage done by your Shadow Word: Pain by 5/10%, but no longer increases the duration of your Shadow Word: Pain.
o Levitate now costs 3% of base mana.
o Lightwell (Holy): Cast time reduced to .5 sec, down from 1.5 sec. Charges increased to 10, up from 5. Now breaks from any attack that hits you for 30% or more of your total health. Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5.
o Mind Control now has only one rank and costs 12% of base mana.
o Mind Soothe now has only one rank, costs 6% of base mana and has no max target level.
o Mind Vision now costs 3% of base mana.
o New Talent: Improved Spirit Tap (Shadow) - Gives you a 50/100% chance to gain a 50% bonus to your Spirit after gaining a critical effect chance from your Mind Blast or Shadow Word: Death spells. For the duration, your mana will regenreate at a 25% rate while casting. Lasts 8 sec.
o New Talent: Twin Faiths (Discipline) - Increases your damage and healing by 1/2/3/4/5%.
o Pain Suppression (Discipline): Cooldown increased to 3 minutes, up from 2.
o Power Infusion (Discipline): Cooldown reduced to 2 minutes, down from 3.
o Psychic Scream now costs 15% of base mana.
o Searing Light (Holy): Now also increases the damage of your Holy Nova and Penance spells.
o Shackle Undead now costs 9% of base mana.
o Shadow Focus (Shadow): Now a 3 point talent, down from 5. Now also reduces the mana cost of your Shadow spells by 2/4/6%.
o Shadow Resilience (Shadow): Now reduces physical damage taken by 2/4%, but no longer reduces the chance to be critically hit by spells.
o Shadowform (Shadow): Now has an innate 30% threat reduction. Now has a shapeshift UI.
o Silent Resolve (Discipline): Now a 3 point talent, down from 5 points.
o Spirit Tap (Shadow) - Talent reduced to 3 points, down from 5. Now also leads into "Improved Spirit Tap"
o Wand Specialization (Discipline) has been removed.

Rogue

o Blade Twisting (Combat) now cause all damaging melee attacks to have a 10% chance to daze for 4/8 seconds.
o Deadened Nerves (Assassination) now reduces all damage taken by 1/2/3/4/5%.
o Fleet Footed (Assassination) now reduces duration of movement impairing effects by 25/50% rather than increasing resist chance.
o Gouge is now only 1 rank and causes damage based on attack power.
o Kick is now only 1 rank and no longer causes damage.
o Nerves of Steel (Combat) now reduces the duration of all Stun and Fear effects by 15/30%.
o Pick Lock and Disarm Trap no longer require Thieve's Tools.
o Premeditation (Subtlety) duration increased to 20 seconds.
o Riposte (Combat) now slows the target's melee attacks by 20% instead of disarming them.
o Setup (Subtlety) chance to gain a combo point increased to 33/66/100%.
o Vanish no longer requires the reagent Flash Powder.
o Vile Poisons (Assassination) reduced to 3 ranks, now increases damage of poisons and Eviscerate by 7/14/20% and increases dispel resistance by 10/20/30%.

Shaman

o All totems are now considered on the "Physical" school, and no longer magical spells.
o Ancestral Knowledge (Enhancement): Now increases your Intellect by 2/4/6%, instead of increasing your total Mana by 2/4/6/8/10%.
o Call of Flame (Elemental): Now also increases the damage of your Lava Burst spell by 2/4/6%.
o Call of Thunder (Elemental) now also increases the critical strike chance of your Thunder spell.
o Concussion (Elemental) now increases the damage of your Thunder and Lava Burst spells.
o Convection (Elemental) is now a 3-point talent, down from a 5-point talent. Now lowers the mana cost of Thunder and Lava Burst.
o Earth's Grasp (Elemental) is now a tier-1 talent, up from tier-2.
o Elemental Detestation (Elemental) is now a tier-2 talent, up from tier-4.
o Elemental Focus (Restoration): Now also can proc off Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Wave, and can be used on all healing spells.
o Elemental Fury (Elemental) now requires Elemental Focus as a pre-requisite
o Elemental Precision (Elemental): Chance to hit reduced to 1/2/3% from 2/4/6%, but threat reduction increased to 10/20/30% up from 4/7/10%.
o Enhancing (Enhancement) Totems is now a Tier 1 talent, up from Tier-2.
o Flametongue Totem is now a flat spell damage totem. All ranks have been modified.
o Frostbrand's snare effect has been increased to 50%, up from 25%.
o Ghost Wolf's mana cost is now 13% base.
o Grace of Air Totem has been removed. (Agility has been rolled over into Strength of Earth Totem)
o Improved Fire Totems (Elemental) is now (again) Improved Fire Nova Totem. It now has a 50/100% chance to stun all targets for 2 sec.
o Improved Lightning Shield (Enhancement) is now Elemental Shields, and is in Tier-1.
o New ranks have been added of Water Shield, starting at level 20. (Level 20, 27, 34, 41, 48, 55, 62, 69)
o New Spell: Earthliving Weapon - Imbue the Shaman's weapon with earthen life. Increases healing done by x and each heal has a 20% chance to proc Earthliving on the target, healing an additionaly over 12 sec. Lasts 30 minutes.
o New Talent: Cleanse Spirit (Restoration) - Cleanse the spirit of a friendly target, removing 1 poison effect, 1 disease effect, and 1 curse effect.
o New Talent: Elemental Shields (Enhancement): Increases the damage done by your Lightning Shield orbs by 5/10/15%, increases the amount of mana gained from your Mana Shield orbs by 5/10/15% and increases the amount of healing done by your Earth Shield orbs by 5/10/15%.
o New Talent: Mental Dexterity (Enhancement) - Increases your Attack Power by 33/66/100% of your Intellect.
o Rockbiter ranks 5 through 9 have been removed. Windfury Weapon is intended to replace Rockbiter at level 30.
o Shapeshifting will no longer cancel Water Walking.
o Shield Specialization (Enhancement) - Now a 2-point talent, and increases the chance to block with attacks by 10/20%, and increases the amount blocked by 5/10%.
o Stoneskin Totem now increases armor instead of reducing physical damage.
o Storm Reach (Elemental): Now also increases the radius of your Thunder spell by 10/20%.
o Strength of Earth Totem now also increases agility.
o Tranquil Air Totem has been removed. (Threat is being addressed by modifications to the base threat of players and/or "baked" into tanking abilities.)
o Unleashed Rage is now raid wide.
o Windfury Totem is now a flat 20% melee haste totem. All ranks have been modified.
o Windwall Totem has been removed.
o Wrath of Air is now a flat 10% spell haste totem.

Warlock

o Aftermath (Destruction) - Now a 2-point talent, down from 5.
o All demon abilities and spells will automatically be learned as pets gain levels. Demon Master trainers will be removed.
o Blood Pact now works raid-wide (not just in party).
o Cataclysm (Destruction) - Now also increases your chance to hit with Destruction spells by 1% per point.
o Curse of Recklessness will no longer prevent Fear effects, only prevent NPCs from fleeing (e.g. at low health).
o Dark Pact: Tooltip updated to be more consistent with other similar effects.
o Demon Armor - Now increases healing done by spells and effects by 20%, but no longer has in-combat health regeneration.
o Demon Skin, Demon Armor and Fel Armor are no longer Magic effects and cannot be dispelled.
o Fel Armor - Now increases your spell damage equal to 30% of your total Spirit, but no longer increases healing done by spells and effects by 20%.
o Fel Stamina (Demonology) has been merged with Fel Intellect into Fel Vitality.
o Howl of Terror now costs 15% of base mana.
o Improved Curse of Weakness (Affliction) is now "Frailty" - Increases the amount of attack power reduced by your Curse of Weakness spell by 10/20%, and increases the amount of armor reduced by your Curse of Recklessness by 10/20%.
o Improved Enslave Demon (Demonology) is now a Tier 5 talent, up from Tier 4.
o Improved Lash of Pain (Destruction) and Improved Firebolt (Destruction) have been merged into one talent, Demonic Power.
o Improved Shadow Bolt (Destruction) - Now increases damage by your next Shadow damage spells by 3/6/9/12/15%, down from 4/8/12/16/20%.
o Mana Feed: Tooltip updated to be more consistent with other similar effects.
o Master Demonologist – Felguard (Demonology) - Now increases all damage by 1/2/3/4/5%, and reduces all damage done to you by 1/2/3/4/5%.
o Master Demonologist – Imp (Demonology) - Now increases Fire damage by 1/2/3/4/5%, and critical hit chance with Fire spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
o Master Demonologist – Succubus (Demonology) - Now increases Shadow damage by 1/2/3/4/5%, and critical hit chance with Shadow spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
o Master Demonologist (Demonology) - Most effects have been altered.
o New Talent: Demonic Empowerment (Demonology) - Grants your Summoned Demon power for a short time.
o New Talent: Eradication (Affliction) - Your Corruption, Siphon Life and Curse of Agony ticks have a 5/10/15% chance to increase your spell haste by 20% for 8 sec. This effect has a 10 second cooldown.
o New Talent: Molten Core (Destruction) - Your Shadow spells and damage over time effects have a 5/10/15% chance to increase the damage of your Fire spells by 10% for 6 sec.
o Pyroclasm (Destruction) - Now also includes Conflagrate.
o Shadowfury (Destruction) - Can now be cast while moving. Stun duration increased to 3 seconds, up from 2.
o Soul Link (Demonology) is now an 11-point talent (used to be a 31-point talent), but the 5% bonus damage from this talent has been removed. In addition, the damage absorbed by Soul Link is now 15%, down from 20%.
o Soul Siphon (Affliction): Now also increases the damage of your Drain Soul.
o Suppression (Affliction) is now a 3-point talent, down from 5. Now increases your chance to hit with Affliction spells by 1/2/3%, down from 1/2/3/4/5%.
o Unstable Affliction (Affliction): Silence effect reduced to 3 seconds, down from 5.

Warrior

o Anticipation (Protection) now increases chance to dodge by 1/2/3/4/5%, moved to tier 2.
o Challenging Shout cooldown reduced to 3 minutes.
o Death Wish (Fury) no longer makes you immune to Fear effects.
o Death Wish and Sweeping Strikes have swapped locations in their respective talent trees.
o Defensive Stance now increases threat by 45%.
o Defiance (Protection) removed, replaced by Incite and moved to a new location on tier 2.
o Hamstring now only has one rank and no longer causes damage.
o Improved Bloodrage (Protection) now increases rage generation of both the instant and over-time effects by 25/50%.
o Improved Disarm (Protection) now reduces the cooldown of Disarm and Shield Break by 5/10/15 seconds and increases damage taken by disarmed targets by 4/7/10%.
o Improved Shield Block (Protection) now has 2 ranks and reduces cooldown of Shield Block by 5/10 secs. It no longer increases the number of blocks.
o Iron Will (Arms) now has only 3 ranks, reducing the duration of Stun and Charm effects by 10/20/30%.
o Last Stand (Protection) cooldown reduced to 6 minutes.
o Mace Specialization (Arms) can no longer trigger more than once per 6 seconds.
o Mocking Blow now only has one rank and causes weapon damage, cooldown reduced to 1 min and can now be used in Defensive Stance.
o Overpower now only has one rank and no longer causes any bonus damage (i.e. weapon damage only).
o Poleaxe Specialization (Arms) now also increases critical damage done by Axes and Polearms by 1/2/3/4/5%.
o Pummel now only has one rank and no longer causes damage.
o Shield Bash now only has one rank and will cause damage based on a % of AP.
o Shield Block now increases chance to block and amount blocked by 100% for the next attack. Cooldown increased to 30 seconds.
o Shield Slam is now available to all warriors, starting at level 40.
o Shield Specialization (Protection) moved to Tier 1, now increases rage by 2 on a successful block.
o Sword Specialization (Arms) can no longer trigger more than once per 6 seconds.
o Toughness (Protection) moved to tier 3.

Professions

o The following tradeskills are available to train up to 425: First Aid, Herbalism, Mining, Skinning, Enchanting, and Leatherworking.

User Interface

o The /cower emote now has an animation.
o Macros and key bindings are now saved server-side so there is no longer a need to reconfigure them when logging in using another computer.
o Shift-clicking to loot mail: You can now hold Shift and click on mail in your inbox to automatically loot any items and gold without opening the mail. This default behavior can be changed via Auto Loot Mail in the Interface Options (Controls).
o Combat Log Changes:
+ The combat log now differentiates between a spell failure due to resistance and spell failure due to missing the target. Where once both events reported as a resist; a spell missing the target is now reported as a miss.
+ Overhealing is now reported in the combat log.
+ When a source of damage is entirely prevented (by a shield block, a full resist, or a damage shield like Power Word:Shield, the prevented amount will now be displayed.

Well, they'd better've done something good with threat, 'cause they apparently just kicked feral druids' threat-boosting talent squarely in the balls.  If they compensated by boosting threat across the board, then that's fine, but as things stand today, bears really can't afford to have less threat generation.  If that change was in 2.4.3, it would've fucked bear tanking in an instant.

When I was reading the patch notes, I had an, 'Oh, what the FUCK.' moment when I saw that.  I must confess to having uncharitably suspected the developers of sabotaging bear tanks to pave the way for a new tank class.

And Christ, I'm not liking the changes to the prot tree for warriors either unless they're totally doing away with crushing blows and just making blocks more for big damage reduction.

Hmm have you been hiding from this thread? Or have we not discussed it?

Bears lost heap armor, DKs can't use shields, etc. Crushing Blows are indeed going.

"Hand of" is a stupid name.

Pally 51 point Holy is a Targatable AoE HoT from all reports.

Ret has a super CC in Repentance now.

Beta patch notes:

Thanks lamaros, a so much interesting stuff here.

Wowhead has Hunter talents up at the moment. The hunter MM 51 pointer looks interesting, although the BM 51 point talent looks awful. Survival gets an AoE which I'm guessing will help maintain their one-per-raid slot.

No, actually the BM one looks to have the potential to be awesome.  That's 5 more pet talent points than other hunters get, not 5 points under the current system.  Since pets get 1 point every 4 levels after level 20, they only get 15 points, while BM hunters get 20.  Depending on the talents that could be huge.   The question is, what are "Exotic" pets?   Obviously other animals that are currently untameable, but can I have a giraffe?   :grin:  The other talents like Cobra Strikes and Longevity look fantastic.

o Force of Will (Discipline): This talent now increases your spell damage by a flat amount, rather than increasing your spells by a %. (Now increases school %, rather than selected spells damage %). In other words, your spell damage gained from this talent is now reflected on your character sheet, rather than the skill tool-tips.

Hmm have you been hiding from this thread? Or have we not discussed it?

Bears lost heap armor, DKs can't use shields, etc. Crushing Blows are indeed going.

"Hand of" is a stupid name.

Pally 51 point Holy is a Targatable AoE HoT from all reports.

Ret has a super CC in Repentance now.

I am still confused and frightened by the Prot Paladin talents. They still seem to use Spellpower, but the 51 pointer is based off of weapon damage...  :headscratch:

I am still confused and frightened by the Prot Paladin talents. They still seem to use Spellpower, but the 51 pointer is based off of weapon damage...  :headscratch:

Warlocks got kicked in the junk and hard.

No more inherent advantage thanks to just having to stack stamina, spell damage and spell crit. They now need to stack Spirit as well.

So pallies get their spells renamed, a bunch of the usual balance-jiggering, and no real paradigm shift.  Good, no reason for me to resub.

Oh, there is a 'heal by beating stuff' pally talent, but instead of being a way to make holy more combative, it's a ret talent.  /facepalm

My guess is, that it just means Fel Armor not be as useful.

Even the best epic geared priests are sitting at around 600 spirit.  600 * .30 = 180ish, so about what my main had weapon has in spell damage atm.

I currently have 180 spirit on my lock just from random bits of spirit on my gear, so 180 * .30 = 54.  180 - 54 = 126 +dmg.  So basically if I stacked myself in priest epics I'd game about 126 +dmg.  I bet it would be nearly impossible to add enough +spi on stuff to make it worth my while to make that a primary stat.

I was speaking more of Demonic Embrace's stamina increase is now 15% of your spirit, so instead of getting an additional say 120 stamina you'd be getting 27. That's almost 1k health at 70, and a big nerf. Now granted, all caster gear is now going to have Spirit on it since all caster classes now get benefit from it, but I don't see how any locks can be happy about this.

So pallies get their spells renamed, a bunch of the usual balance-jiggering, and no real paradigm shift.  Good, no reason for me to resub.

Oh, there is a 'heal by beating stuff' pally talent, but instead of being a way to make holy more combative, it's a ret talent.  /facepalm

Ahh, I just read the patch notes above, I didn't look at the talent calculators yet.


EDIT:  If this change happened today, I'd lose 555 hp.  That sucks but isn't game breakingly bad.

EDIT2: But now all PVP builds will include soul link, so it's probably close to a wash.

This may actually be a good thing PVE-wise, as locks will have much better mana regen during long fights. PVP though is another matter, locks  survivability seem to be getting nerfed while other classes got buffed. We'll have to see though.

So pallies get their spells renamed, a bunch of the usual balance-jiggering, and no real paradigm shift.  Good, no reason for me to resub.

Oh, there is a 'heal by beating stuff' pally talent, but instead of being a way to make holy more combative, it's a ret talent.  /facepalm

I don't know, moving Soul Link down 20 talents (and only nerfing it 5%) still makes it close to a wash.  I suspect, as I said above, all pvp builds will include Soul Link.

If the changes happened today I'd have ~1500 more hp from soul link (assuming no healing at all) and 555 less hp from the loss of demonic embrace, so pretty much a survivability buff.  And a Haunt/SL build looks pretty nice to me if you want survivability.

My Big concern with holy (outside of it still having a frustrating playstyle, waiting to see how the rest of the new abilities pan out) is mana regen. It doesn't have any.

I was speaking more of Demonic Embrace's stamina increase is now 15% of your spirit, so instead of getting an additional say 120 stamina you'd be getting 27. That's almost 1k health at 70, and a big nerf. Now granted, all caster gear is now going to have Spirit on it since all caster classes now get benefit from it, but I don't see how any locks can be happy about this.

I agree.  I shouldn't have almost 10k hps (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Zul%27jin&n=Narcella) and only 3 pieces of s2 armor.  The rest is greens, rep armor or low-level quest blues.  It's fucking sick.

Oh Hai (http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Varimathras&n=Mesmerize)

15K HP, 1.3K +dmg. And that's still with room for upgrades and missing a bunch of potential buffs.

It's a pure PvP build, but still silly.

I'm all of 2 weeks as a 70 on a new server, I'm going to have shitty spell damage.  The greens I have are from quests leveling up to this point and have been the best available +dam items.  I should have shitty hp as well, but don't.

His original point above was that is was "sick" that he could be in all greens and have 10k hp.  I pointed out to get that sta in all greens he sacrificed +dmg.

You then point me to a lock in all purps.

An equally geared mage would also only have 600 spell damage, but would have 2-3K less HP.

Who gives a flying fuck?

I demand more Hunter details.  What's going on with Exotic pets and Pet talents ?


Feed me seymour.

(http://xs229.xs.to/xs229/08290/bike2-half137.jpg) (http://xs.to)

 :drill:

The disparity exists, no one doubts it.  He linked to a "10k health lock in greens, zomg" and I pointed out that he was sacrificing +dmg to get that health.  A pretty significant amount of +dmg at that.

I'm guessing (hoping) that it's the two-person engineering mount, but judging from the fact that there's an alliance version as well it's probably BG- or quest-related.

The dwarves have fucking tanks parked outside their city, a subway system covers a couple miles of underground tunnel between cities, and a network of trans-continental blimps ferry people around in the sky.  Plus, robots.  Motorcycles really aren't a stretch given how much we've already seen.

Really, the only thing that doesn't make sense in the world is that they haven't built a Roman-esque road network to make the most of their vehicles.

Good points, well made. Maybe this is the real subconscious reason I play Horde? :D

Edit: I have sausage-fingers!

Oh, damn you're right.  I think it is a mix, because of something else I saw.. one of the achievements was "Has leveled every class to 70."  I wonder if that one comes up as "Mr. Poopinasock" for a title.


That was confirmed a while ago, along with "learn new dance moves," I thought.

It is possible to pull 10-12 mobs and come out with near full health.

Not seeing any HOTs for Paladins. Or did I just not see any holy changes.

Fairly sure Paladins were seeking some form of HOT to be considered viable in Holy spec.

As well as different CC in certain specs.

Soooo, Deathknights seem pretty powerful currently in Beta, at level 60 (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8202532560&sid=2003&pageNo=2)


 :grin:

Don't know the exact details, and I don't really feel like reading that thread to find them if they're stated, but that doesn't sound too unusual on the face of it.  Paladins can do pretty much the same thing.

The details better be that it takes a ton of time to get them all down, but you could survive. Otherwise, that's like one class being able to play in Diablo-mode while the rest of us are running around rubbing two sticks together for warmth in the cold cruel world.

Lock hate is part fear, part gear scaling.  Early on casters own, because melee has shit for weapons.  Yes, they scale into ubergods after a few tiers of gear, but it WAS a minority until badge weaps and t6+ weaps became easy to get.   Now that any shmoe with  a few weeks can run Kara and get some very nice melee weaps, casters are in big pain.

You saw this same progression back prior to BC, and in lower level battlegrounds.  We'll see it again in WOTLK.   It's one of the fundamental flaws of WoW's design, and one not enough folks have examined yet to avoid the mistakes in the next generation of games.

Interesting to know that there's still quite some warlock hate going around... I do play a lock main currently, and it’s an interesting contrast to the lock forums where the general tone is doom and gloom about how locks are helpless against geared rogues and warriors, and how hunters are chewing up locks too.

Ah no, I'm talking about right now. You get full dotted, death coiled, and die in fear. With no CC breaks you can't win at all. I'm not complaining about it because I don't care what happens in lowbie PVP, but it would definitely add to the general warlock whines.

Warlocks are much much less powerful in PvP than they used to be, they are nowhere near as hard to kill as you make out. And at max level they have gone from being probably the best dueling class to being one of the worst.

The new Shaman and Druid talents look awesome. It's going to be tough to decide what spec is most fun. The new Paladin talents, while an improvement, really do nothing to motivate me to continue the struggle with my level 66.

We’re pleased to announce a convenient upgrade to the way that mounts and vanity pets are handled in Wrath of the Lich King.

Players will be able to “learn” a mount or non-combat pet much like learning a spell, recipe, or new ability, and these creatures will then show up on a new Pet tab within the Character Info section of the interface. Players will be able to access and preview their learned mounts and vanity pets through this tab.

Once learned, the pet icon or mount icon will no longer appear in bag spaces or bank spaces. This inventory space will be made available once again for other adventuring needs. Pets can still be set to hotkeys by dragging them to the hotkey bar, much like any other spell or ability.

I'd probably go with the boomkin until people have figured out the changes to totems, since they seem to be intent on completely mixing up what buffs you get from them.

Also, it seems like haste gear will be de-riguer come the expansion, everything from level 68 Northrend quest greens up seems to offer options for stacking quite considerable amounts of haste, and almost every class is getting some form of haste-increasing talent, if not several.

They're not as bad as they used to be, but they still outscale Mages, SPriests, Ele Shamen and Boomkins. They're only really weak against melee, but most melee are enjoying a cloth curbstomping spree at the moment so it's not really. In duels, any healer who beats an equally geared lock is doing impressively.

DKs enter outlands with gear much better than most classes. It's too early to judge.

Looking at how they're going at 70 will be a better guide.

I expect there will be a lot of changes still, the Frost tree is very meh at the moment now that runes cannot be changed.

It's lots of litte touches like this that I think are a large part of Blizzards success.

I think it's related to the destructible PVP zone. I seem to recall reading about the two person vehicles in one of the previews for that zone, but I can't remember where.

Do people think blizz will be able to design this correctly?  I have my doubts, espcially when you look at their only other complex instance, Alterac Valley.  AV has become little more than an honor farm where both sides AVOID PvP in a race to complete PvE objectives.

AV is also a bad example because of all the fucking changes that have been made to it over the years.  It was intended to be an open zone like this new one, but they dropped it in an instance to provide some PvP content and fairness on the wildly population-imbalanced servers. 

Originally there WAS a lot of PvP in the zone, when games could last 12-24 hours.  You'd see wolf riders and towers go back and forth, and the giant tree or icelord.  It was a fun time. However, games lasted 12-24 fucking hours!  So they started peeling back stuff bit by bit... until you have the PvE zerg race we now see.

Equally stupid that it also gives so much honor for the amount of time a game takes, which is WHY people avoid PvP.  Slowing down to pvp means less honor/ hour. The reinforcements still don't fix this because of the "Kill the General" win mechanic. Remove those and you'd see some real pvp In AV.

The new PvP zone is supposed to be much more like oldschool AV..with multiple areas to win/ lose and quests that pop up as each one is won or lost that give honor (like the hala & BG daily).   I think there's a good chance of it working out fairly well, so long as that fucking "kill the general and ignore everything else" mechanic is gone.

Yep, killing the general is what makes AV a race in its current implementation.  Remove that and people would be forced to kill each other, or burn towers for the win.  That and a few adjustments to how honor is distributed at the end depending on what towers are still standing and who owns what graveyards and mines, and AV would be almost as good as it was in its first incarnation.  Almost.  Without that mechanic in the new PvP zone, I'm more confident that there'll be actual combat there.

Old AV was fun but there was so much crap going on in it that it would take forever. Basically the alliance would win when the horde went to bed if anybody won at all. God I remember fighting for 2 or 3 hours just trying to take snowfall. That GY is damn near impossible to cap if its fully defended.


In a persistant zone such as lake wintergrasp that kind of game play could work fine because you would want the attack and defense to take a long time. In a battle ground though that game play did not work as well because people being people they will go to where the best rewards are and you get jack for honor in a BG that lasts 24 hours and so horde would not queue for it. This made the fun 5 or so hour alliance queue times we all knew and loved.

It's a bad example because they were trying to turn a Open PVP zone into a quick BG experience. It would be like saying Basket Ball sucks because I keep trying to play it in a Hockey arena.


Now a Good example would be all the various 'world' PvP objectives. Those are awesome.   :awesome_for_real:

It seems like everyone is talking about the AV problems and missing the point of why I brought it up:  IF they can't get AV right in FOUR YEARS, then they probably can't code sieges correctly.

the old LFG stones

It seems like everyone is talking about the AV problems and missing the point of why I brought it up:  IF they can't get AV right in FOUR YEARS, then they probably can't code sieges correctly.

It still boggles my mind that someone could have ever been paid to design those stones. Probably the best example of "game devs are fucking stupid" ever.

Yea, every six hours or so.  :uhrr:

And it seems like you're missing my point, which is Blizzard has a knack for seemingly not being able to fix stuff for FOUR YEARS and then suddenly pulling something out of their ass that makes you say "ohh, shit they got it.. they actually got it".

And for proof I present you with:

Are you seriously saying the LFG stones are on the same difficulty level as a PvP game?  I know you were a fellow Shadowbane player, so you know the difficulty of designing good PvP. You can't fool me!

This is one of the good things.  Compare the towers to Halaa, where you can never actually WIN because as soon as it flips, the enemy can start working on taking it.  Therefore 'victory' is dependent on which side has people that continue to fight the longest.  In Terrokar, on the other hand, you fight until one side wins, and that's it...victory is achieved.  It's not dependent on who's sticking around the longest.

They can't get AV right because they won't completely trash the zone and start over.  The lone PvE  At this point they're nearly there, but much like the old LFG stones, this is probably some higher-ups baby.

They "have to" make the PvP grind unbearable and stupid to assuage the PvE only folks. All that shit about welfare epics and crap.  :awesome_for_real:

It seems like everyone is talking about the AV problems and missing the point of why I brought it up:  IF they can't get AV right in FOUR YEARS, then they probably can't code sieges correctly.

Actually the problem with AV is the orginal game play was made more for a persistent zone and was stuck in a BG. Due to how rewards work in BG and how the queuing system work its what caused the root of the problem. Simply sticking the old av with a few tweaks in a persistant environment with some half decent rewards for doing it would have been great.

'Victory' is in fact, a bad thing for world PvP objectives. As soon as one side losses, they go away till tomorrow. Now you can no longer PvP. If an enemy force is still moralized enough for a immediate counter attack, they should be able to.

The other problem with halaa is probably the biggest. There is no reason to defend halaa there is nothing in the town worth holding for more than a couple minutes to do turn ins or to buy an item from the vendors. Combined with the fact that while attacking halaa is a hoot but defending it is a pain most people I know just say let the horde take halaa so we can take it back they don't even try to defend it because its more fun to let the horde have it and take it back.

If by 'great' you mean 'the dominant side on the server controls it 24/7', of course. It was instanced for a reason.

Winning and losing define fights and make them significant to players.  I don't remember the time I fought a while, killed some people, got killed a few times, then had to leave.  I remember the time I defeated the enemy, crushing them and achieving my objective even if I died a lot more while doing it.  You can no longer PvP is a little excessive a declaration, depending on how long victory counts for.  Furthermore, if there are enough different objectives with different victory timers, you'll almost always be able to find an objective to fight over.  If a battle consists of numerous interconnected objectives, each of which has a victory condition and timer, I can achieve victory, contribute to the battle, then leave if I have to without feeling like I'm abandoning my post.  If, on the other hand, the place I captured comes under attack time and again as long as the enemy chooses to do so, then for me to leave is to abandon my post.

Man, you guys talk a lot about PvP in a game that seems to have been primarily built around PvE.

Man, you guys talk a lot about PvP in a game that seems to have been primarily built around PvE.

As to Halaa itself, it's major issue is reward (virtually none) and defending is boring. The most effective defense is to camp the launch points for the bombers and gank people as they land. Not exactly compelling gameplay. It's actually rather enjoyable once you reach the stage where the fighting stalls onto the bridge-push, but then falls apart again once you reach the actual Halaa flag and end up GY/Corpse camped.

A simple way to make defending more interesting would be to add player controlled AA guns  :grin: . Or hand out special Halaa only rocket launchers to shoot at the bombers. Something active for the defenders to do. If the action fizzles out, give the defenders Halaa only hearthstones that last X hours or until Halaa is captured. They'll act like defense pagers on top of the obvious function. Alerting potential defenders when the attack starts up again.

Highlighting is mine. You say that like it's a bad thing. That's the entire point of 'world' PvP. Shit will happen even if you aren't there. The entire point is to create a illusion of permanency and persistence. Without actually creating actual permanency.

The 'Victory Count' instills actual permanency, which means the losers can't umm, un-lose. Which means there isn't any reason for them to fight anymore, which means they go home and craft potions or something. Any time you have a timer long enough to let the winners feel free to leave and not worry, you have a a timer long enough to make the losers feel like not coming back at all.

If there is an objective so desirable that both sides will fight over it relentlessly, how is this bad? Finite resolutions are for the BGs. Taking Halaa is Victory, Holding Halaa is also Victory. Having Halaa locked out artificially for X hours means the fun is over and we might as well just turn it into a instance BG with a lock out timer.

A simple way to make defending more interesting would be to add player controlled AA guns  :grin: . Or hand out special Halaa only rocket launchers to shoot at the bombers. Something active for the defenders to do. If the action fizzles out, give the defenders Halaa only hearthstones that last X hours or until Halaa is captured. They'll act like defense pagers on top of the obvious function. Alerting potential defenders when the attack starts up again.

make defending ultimatily futile,

:uhrr:  That part makes no sense to me.  Winning and losing should be based on who actually does better, not pre-rigged so that one side always loses.

#  According to a fixed, rolling schedule, one faction will defend the keep/mine, and the other faction will assault it. Both sides will fight over towers and siege workshops scattered around the zone.
# If the attacking force succeeds in capturing the keep/mine, that faction will defend it during the next rotation. If that attacking force fails to capture the final objective before the next rotation, that faction will be given more resources (unknown to what those might be for now)" to balance out the fight, and give every faction a chance to hold Lake Wintergrasp.

Read up a bit about Wintergrasp:


Why is the second mechanic in place? To make it so everyone gets to win at some point.

Wintergrasp looks to have a very good grasp on the PvP problems in WoW, hence my optimism.

/bg Guys, We won the last 2 rounds, and now all these NPCs are just destroying us.
/bg Noob, that's so the sucky alliance can win.  DANCE PARTY TIME!!

Less wanking, more spoilage.  Kthx.

Warlock pet changes (src)

    * Felhunter: Paranoia and Tainted Blood have been replaced with Fel Intelligence and Shadow Bite.
    * Shadow Bite (Felhunter): Deals Shadow damage plus additional 5% Shadow damage for each damage over time effect on the target. 6 sec cooldown.
    * Fel Intelligence (Felhunter): Increases total Intellect and Spirit of party and raid members by 3%. Lasts until cancelled.
    * New Talent: Improved Felhunter (Affliction) - Your Felhunter gains mana equal to 50/100% of the damage done by it's Shadow Bite ability, and increases the effect of your Felhunter's Fel Intelligence by 1/2%.
    * Felguard: Health increased by 10%.
    * Succubus: Health increased by 20%, armor increased 22%.
    * Imp: Health increased 20%, Armor increased 16%, mana regeneration increased 200%.
    * Voidwalker: Health increased by 20%, Damage increased by 16%. The amount of attack power the Voidwalker gains from it's master's spell damage has been increased by 45%.
    * Consume Shadows (Voidwalker): Duration reduced to 6 seconds, and effect increased 66%. Now also greatly increases all nearby allies stealth detection while channeled.
    * Summon Dreadsteed/Felsteed: Mana cost removed, global cooldown removed.
    * Bane now also reduces the cast time of your Haunt spell.
    * Infernal: Cooldown reduced to 15 minutes, down from 1 hour. Duration reduced to 1 minute, down from 5 minutes+. Health increased by 30%, damage increased by 60%, and armor increased 30%.
    * Doomguard: Health increased 20%, mana increased 24%.
    * Avoidance (Felguard) - Now reduces damage taken from area of effect attacks by an additional 80%.
    * Avoidance: Now automatically learned for the Succubus, Imp, Voidwalker and Felhunter at level 10.

Potion Sickness? (http://www.worldofraids.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2097&c=15)  Wtf?  So you can only use one potion, ever, in a prolonged combat now?  Sucks to be a mana user.

Paranoia did jack shit 98% of the time anyways.

They seem to be more mana management type abilities into the game (example: that new pally evocate). Also, if I was a betting man, I'd say that this change heralds a good sized increase in the relative amount that a single potion will restore at 80. I'd happily trade away getting to use more than one potion in a fight for a potion that heals enough so I can actually see my health bar move. When you're hitting 20k fully buffed, a 1500-2500 super healing potion is ... insufficient.

Paranoia did jack shit 98% of the time anyways.

The 2 minute cooldown on potions was more than enough of a penalty to those who either require mana for DPS or for healing. Welcome to the World of Meleecraft in PvE as well as PvP again. It is possible that this, like tinitus (the anti-drum stacking debuff which has a 2min CD) was intended as a nerf to Haste potions (or destro pots, tho most casters get more bang for their buck from chugging Mana Pots).

Again, I don't think we should jump to conclusions until we see what other mana efficiency changes are coming, and especially when we see what happens with everyone using spirit gear at 80. My resto druid already goes through entire kara runs without even drinking, let alone taking a potion, and it is nearly the same with my elemental shaman. Were they to bring the other classes up to that level of mana efficiency, the potion change wouldn't hurt in the slightest.

I just had a thought.. this also seems aimed at trying to keep a lid on Herb prices since inscriptions and potions use them.  If we continued with the same chug-a-potion gameplay the prices for high-end Glyphs, scrolls and potions would be ridiculous.

Works fine for what I use it for.. guarding shit in AV.  Can't approach my back if you have to come through an entrance.  If I'm in another BG, I just face the opposite direction of my pet, and it's on aggro... but who plays anything BUT AV these days anyway?  :oh_i_see:

Don't know about your server, but on Dreadmaul herb and potion prices have been plunging because supply exceeds demand.

What, you're on my server?

Don't know about your server, but on Dreadmaul herb and potion prices have been plunging because supply exceeds demand. Felweed prices just dropped to 4g a stack, super healing to 7-8g and super mana at 9-10. My herb/alchem don't even bother with AH any more - if I needed money I just go to the isle of the ATM.. erm Quel Danas ahem.

My Horde server (Zul'jin) is averaging about 20g for a stack of super mana pots right now.  My Alliance server (Alleria) is higher than that (but I'm not sure how much as I'm on the Horde toon atm) because of the extremely high number of Raid guilds based there.

I have a pally called Compoundname, though I don't play him much. Just infrequently collecting stuff for my DK.

I'm going to assume your character is Alliance, seeing how the name is not familiar. However maybe my memory just isn't as excellent as I think it is.

Tranq Shot will soon be able to dispel enrage mechanics (i.e. Warrior Enrage, Rogue's Hunger For Blood, etc.). It should also be able to dispel Druids' "Owlkin Frenzy" effect. Also going to lower the cooldown.

In addition, Tranq Shot will also be able to dispel magic effects, and we're removing that from Arcane Shot.

We regret creating a dispel mechanic that also did damage, so we're re-designing that mechanic. It didn't fix any of Hunter's issues, anyways, and made them better against classes they were already good against (casters).

I haven't seen much on warriors either. I know they are trying to fix the problems with overgearing content by generating rage on dodges and parries, but I'm not sure what they intend to do with them as tanks overall.

I haven't seen much on warriors either. I know they are trying to fix the problems with overgearing content by generating rage on dodges and parries, but I'm not sure what they intend to do with them as tanks overall.

Having had 3 level cap warriors, let me briefly explain the PVP changes for warriors in build 8820:

 :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:

Expect Paladins to be virtually redone in their entirety before Beta's end... again.

New Talent - Furious Attacks (Tier 8 ) - Your normal melee attacks have a 50/100% chance to reduce all healing done to the target by 25% for 8 sec. This can stack up to 2 times.

You saying this because of the completely broken judgements, the mana issues with prot pallies or something else?

Stupid question, probably, but is there any place I can get a handy breakdown of what's going on in the beta, such as patch notes and whatnot ?

All of the above and then some. The Dual scaling of paladin attacks with both SP and AP is going to be a constant headache and trying to make abilities 'expensive' relative to use for Holy Paladins that are shared with Prot Paladins seems like a lesson in futility.

Also the few blue posts actually on or about Paladins, are summed up by "This is a rough draft, expect more major changes".


Then there is the ever present issues of Holy still being shit to actually play, Prot still trivializing anything with more then 3 mobs and Ret still not bringing enough to a raid while its damage being wildly inconsistent (if not flat out broken one way or the other).


They ain't close to done with Paladins yet, no.



My personal suspicion, which I have no evidence or facts to back up, are they intend to see what works from the Melee/Heal hybrids in WAR, and 'Blizzardfy' them for Paladins.  :oh_i_see:

I think the new trailer is pretty nifty. Much better than the TBC one was.

PS. Holy STILL doesn't have a proper fucking HoT/Shield spell.  :angryfist:

It's the str-block conversion that you're seeing.

I tank in dps gear at 80 and the difference is that str is now the best threat stat (after being the worst at 70).

They increased it from 20 str to 1 bv to something like 2str->1bv.

Yeah.

Prot pallys doing damage feels weird, too.   I still have a shitty 41.2dps spelldam weapon and I'm hitting for 300-400 with my hammer spell.  Yarr!

Do you have Holy Shield slam yet? Everything I've read points to that being  :drill:

I;m doing around 376 with my devastates.

I'm not even in the Beta.  I'm 70.

Quick Q that has no doubt been answered elsewhere but I couldn't see it in 10 secs of searching:

Does the Death Knight take up one of the 10 character slots on a server?

The one per server isn't a problem. It's the "Oh Noes! Which character do I get rid of?" that's going to be a problem. Still, I've got 2 months to work it all out. 3 by the time I actually decide to create one.





Probably ditch the Shaman because I hate his guts.

Why do you have two paladins?

Why do you have two paladins?

They start with 7 16 slot bags and a full flight map, though.

Besides, we all know the best bank alts are gnomes in Tuxedos and a Monocle.

Besides, we all know the best bank alts are gnomes in Tuxedos and a Monocle.

This is going to make them the best bank/AH mules EVAR.

But you can only make one, right?

Surely people already have their bank alts outfitted and slots bought?

Big, BIG spoilers in this cinematic/machinima: http://files.filefront.com/WOW+Wrathgate+1024avi/;11881764;/fileinfo.html
(Which then leads on to a pair of pretty  :awesome_for_real: parallel questlines for Horde & Alliance).

and was trying to summon someone back into Norrath.

Follow-up questline spoilers:

I wasn't going to click the spoilers link but I'm sort of glad I did. But I don't understand the implications - what does that mean for players who, for example, don't get the expansion or are too low level?

I think they're doing it with the new "zone phasing" they're introducing with LK. 

Motorcycle mount?

Please dear god tell me that there's a version without a sidecar because I will have to have this mount at any fucking cost.

Yeah, not pleased. I mean, its better than having her not even be the right kind of elf, but come on. Shouldn't the banshee queen... look like a banshee? At least a little?

too fucking Saiyn

Also, perhaps they could introduce Sylvannas to some shirt technology.

Yeah, not pleased. I mean, its better than having her not even be the right kind of elf, but come on. Shouldn't the banshee queen... look like a banshee? At least a little?

Both new Sylvanas and Varian bother me for the exact same reason. They're 13 year old boy fantasies. Down right cliche!

Buddy of mine found a great thing about the sidecar in a WSG a week or so ago on the Beta.

Riding in the sidecar does not drop the flag!.

He had a screenshot of them riding off the roof to the flag room.

How fucking awesome is the image of a motorcycle flying off the top of the base with someone in the sidecar holding the flag?

In a fantasy game?  About the silliest thing I can think of. 

In a fantasy game?  About the silliest thing I can think of.  The only way to make it work is to have a leather wearing dwarf named The Fonz doing it.

In a fantasy game?  About the silliest thing I can think of.  The only way to make it work is to have a leather wearing dwarf named The Fonz doing it.

You're right of course. Soon they'll have biplanes, mechanical mounts and an entire race who crashlanded in a spaceship and use holograms to communicate with each other.

Some steamtech crap and some pop culture jokes fit within the theme of WoW.  However, too much of that stuff destroys the theme.  A motorcycle with a "PWN" licenseplate that is useable by anybody and looks like that is too much imo.

I mostly agree with Moorgard.  I'd rather play in the world as portrayed in the cinematics (with some jokes and anachronisms as spice) rather than play in an aesthetically incoherent world that's all spice and little theme.    http://www.mobhunter.com/?p=308

Redeemed demons crashing into the planet with gigantic chiming beings of light in a space ship, fantastic and dangerous steampunk gnomish/goblin inventions, zepplins, magical floating cities, and living stones I can deal with, but a motorcycle?

FUCK THAT, IMMERSION RUINED, CANCELING ACCOUNT

I've grudgingly accepted the pistols and steampunk of the world.  It was generally portrayed as being shoddy, dangerous, and not nearly as effective as magic.  Mostly it added flavor, but was largely in the background, too.  At least when I played.  The Draenei were a mixed bag.  I hated the space ship, beings of light angle.  I loved (really, really loved) the gypsy-gargoyle look.  There was a lot which was hard to ignore, but I did my best.

The motorcycle is something going to be seen everywhere though.  It's not going to be a funny or dangerous item, it'll be safe, ubiquitous, and it's look makes me think the artists didn't even try.  It's only one thing of many that would annoy me were I playing.  Why they decided to take the worst combination of fantasy and pop-culture I don't know, however it does keep me from returning.

I guess you've been gone too long to have noticed the helicopters then. The player made/rode ones, not the ones that popped up occasionally in quests.

I guess you've been gone too long to have noticed the helicopters then. The player made/rode ones, not the ones that popped up occasionally in quests.

I think too much of a deal is being made out of this, honestly.

It's a defense mechanism, as people realize that WAR isn't the holy grail they are grasping for a reason to hate WoW to keep themselves from going back.  It'll give them something to bitch about for about a month until WotLK hits stores and we get the inevitable "I'm weak" threads and everyone is discussing what server they play on.

Can you people not play two games at once? Because I don't really find it that complicated at all playing both.

It's a defense mechanism, as people realize that WAR isn't the holy grail they are grasping for a reason to hate WoW to keep themselves from going back.  It'll give them something to bitch about for about a month until WotLK hits stores and we get the inevitable "I'm weak" threads and everyone is discussing what server they play on.

Actually, I've always disliked the pop-culture sillyness of WoW, trying to ignore it as much as I could when playing.  I don't even play WAR so I have no "holy grail" delusions there at all. 

it's look makes me think the artists didn't even try. 

It's a defense mechanism, as people realize that WAR isn't the holy grail they are grasping for a reason to hate WoW to keep themselves from going back.  It'll give them something to bitch about for about a month until WotLK hits stores and we get the inevitable "I'm weak" threads and everyone is discussing what server they play on.

The helicopters actually look rickety and barely-working, too, though.  I don't have an engineer high enough to have one, but some people have told me that at times, the chopper will stop working, drop a few feet, then kick in again, as though threatening to fall out of the air at any moment.

I assume you're talking to the people who are wailing about the game destroying motorcycles?

Why are you surfing the WoW forum, let alone posting here then?

Well yeah, and the general "YOU MUST DECIDE" raging lunacy that some of the fanbois about either game start spewing. Someone needs to remind those people this isn't a race war.

Also, that picture of the monkey in front of a fire was awesome.

We’re currently planning to end the fourth Arena season on October 14, 2008, and as always -- this date could easily change. This Arena Season is only ending in respect to the ladder, meaning we'll be taking a snapshot of the season's ladder and then go through our normal process to determine who is eligible for the end-of-season rewards. This process should take approximately one week. It's very important for players who feel that they may be eligible for the arena-specific title and/or Armored Nether Drake to refrain from transferring their character to another realm between the date outlined above, and when the end-of-season rewards are physically awarded.

Upon the end of this Arena Season, teams and ratings will not be wiped, and will carry forward allowing players to earn points each week and purchase gear until the launch of the expansion (November 13, 2008).

Also, it appears the latest test server/ beta push nerfed TBC hit points by 30% to all mobs in raid instances.  Yes, that includes Bosses.