f13.net

Changes confirmed by Tigole in Level
The changes listed below were confirmed by Tigole during an interview with the swedish magazine Level (and from a few blue posts on the german official forums for a few of them, but original posts have been deleted a few days later)

Sunwell Isle

    * Sunwell Isle will be located off the coast, north of Silvermoon, and will be patched in with patch 2.4
    * Sunwell Isle will be a major questing hub with a 5-man Normal and Heroic Instance (Magister's Terrace) and a 25-man raid (Sunwell Plateau). The goal with Sunwell Isle is to close the Burning Crusade storyline before the release of the next expansion.
    * There are still a few scenarios left that could be released to provide the players with more content if WotLK gets delayed for any reason.
    * At the release of the patch, players will access a small expedition camp where they can start questing. However as the questing progresses, players will expand the camp and make it grow to a small town by retaking building to the enemies (running daily quests mostly). You can consider it as a AQ Gates opening event, the more daily quests that gets done, the faster the whole server will progress.
    * The quests will end the Tempest Keep story arc.
    * "The Shattered Sun Offensive" will be the new faction of this quest hub. It also seems that Aldor and Scryers will finally start fighting together against the new threat.
    * Both 5-man and 25-man dungeons will be accessible from the start, but some bosses will have to be unlocked by running the daily quests (server-wide) and/or leveling your reputation. The 5-man instance will most likely requires Honored reputation with The Shattered Sun Offensive, the first three bosses of the 25-man instance will be accessible from the start, while the three last ones will have to be unlocked through questing.


Sunwell Plateau (25 Players)

      The Sunwell Plateau (5-man) will be a multiple-buildings instance powered by captured Naarus. The last room will contain the Sunwell.
    * Kil'jaeden will be the final boss of the 25-man instance. The other bosses include Brutalicus, a giant Pit Lord who has lost his wings, Kalecgos, a blue dragon enslaved by Kil'jaeden, a Fel Dragon, the female Eredar Twins, and a Dark Naaru.
    * The 25-man instance will be slightly harder than Black Temple, and is tuned for Tier 6 geared players.
    * There will not be any "real" Tier 7 set, but some of the drops will be set pieces (not necessarily class specific). The drops quality will be above T6.


Magister's Terrace (5 players)

    * Magister's Terrace shouldn't be harder than Shadow Labyrinth or Shattered Halls.
    * The final boss of the normal mode will drop Karazhan-level epic loots. (Like the first bosses of Karazhan)
    * Bosses in Heroic Mode will drop karazhan-loot as well, and the endboss will have Malchezaar-quality loot. (slightly higher than the other KZ bosses)
    * Kael'thas will be one of the boss of the 5-man dungeon, he's still alive and he's now got a huge green crystal etched to his chest. However players might be able to fight him only when they play the dungeon in heroic mode.
    * The design of Magister's Terrace is based on Silvermoon City, it will also features the observatory the Blood Elves use to watch the Sunwell.


Daily quests

    * Patch 2.4 will raise the cap of Daily quests allowed in a day from 10 to 25.


PvP

    * Balancing actions will be taken in regard to PvP for certain classes.
    * Blizzard have large plans for arena, and they will be aiming to bring it closer to e-sport acceptance (However, it's still very unsure if it will be in the 2.4 Patch or in WotLK).

Quest Improvements

    * New daily fishing quest
    * Maximum daily quests per day increased to 25
    * New repeatable Battleground quests

Item Improvements

    * New Heroic badge rewards
    * Some PvP rewards now obtainable through PvE content


Caverns of Time

    * New teleportation portal to the Caverns of Time accessible through reputation with Keepers of Time

* Balancing actions will be taken in regard to PvP for certain classes.

Announced changes to date:



- General -

* Introduction of Sunwell Plateau (25-man raid instance) and new 5-man dungeon, as well as related faction.

* Loot from the Burning Crusade world bosses (Doom Lord Kazzak and Doomwalker) will now be Bind on Equip.

* 25-man raid bosses will now drop 3 tier armor set tokens per kill.

* Reputation gain rate in Battle for Mount Hyjal increased.

* Gems from Heroic dungeons are no longer Unique-Equipped.

* Spell Haste will reduce the global cool down on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second (doesn't apply to melee and ranged abilities).

* When you loot a Bind on Pickup item that only you can pick up (such as Heroic Badges) you'll no longer see the confirmation dialog. When you loot a Bind on Pickup item the confirmation window is going to list the name of the item in the window.

* Daily quests for Fishing will be added in 2.4.

* Ranks of spells acquired by talents (e.g. Mortal Strike) will not need to be re-trained upon further respecs.

* Items intended for Retribution Paladins have had their stats adjusted.

* The inability to summon in Netherstorm will be removed (/cheer Tigole).

* More Badge of Justice rewards to be added.

* A new portal to access the Caverns of Time will be made available to players via Keepers of Time reputation.



- PvP -

* There will not be diminishing return calculations on honorable kills in 2.4. No honor will be awarded for killing players with Resurrection Sickness, or for killing a player who has died 50+ times in the same Battleground.

* Honor calculations will now happen instantaneously, as opposed to nightly.

* Stealth detection in Arenas will now debuff the player with a 5% increased damage taken effect, as opposed to the previous DoT effect.

* Players will now be able to purchase level 70 Superior quality PvP items from reputation vendors.

* Horde starting tunnel moved further back in Alterac Valley.

* The General and Warmasters in Alterac Valley for each faction will receive a stacking buff from each other that boosts their health and damage.

* Balinda Stonehearth in Alterac Valley will have new abilities. Balinda and General Vanndar Stormpike's additional health will be removed.

* Repeatable Battleground quests to be added.



- Professions -

Enchanting:

* A new recipe, allowing the Enchanter to split 1 Void Crystal into 2 Large Prismatic Shards, will be added.



- Classes -

Druid:

* Lacerate will now scale with Feral Attack Power.

Mage:

* Conjured Manna Biscuit is now Unique (80).
* Spellsteal will no longer overwrite buffs that have a longer duration.

Priest:

* Fear Ward castable in Shadowform.

Shaman:

* Healing Grace will reduce the chance that all of your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.

Warlock:

* The ability to summon players directly into instances with Ritual of Summoning will be re-enabled in 2.4

Warrior:

* Off-Hand weapon critical hits from Whirlwind will trigger Flurry and Rampage.
* Endless Rage to provide significantly more Rage.



- User Interface -

* Interface options changes will allow AddOn authors to interact more readily with the game interface, decreasing the likelihood of integration bugs or AddOn 'taint'.

* The combat log system will receive a dramatic overhaul.

* The Raid UI now can display the range of players relative to you.

* 25-man raid bosses will now drop 3 tier armor set tokens per kill.

Additional excerpts of 2.4 Patch Notes (not confirmed)

The following info have been posted (from memory, so its not an exact copy/paste of the real thing) by a trusted source on ElitistJerks. (Its from the benefactors board)

Keep in mind, nothing has been confirmed by an official source.

WARLOCK
- Improved Shadow Bolt now only works for the warlock who casted the bolt.
- ISB reduced to 15% at max rank
- Incinerate coeff increased by $
- Demonic Knowledge reduced to 10% from 15%
- Lifetap coeff reduced by $
- Lifetap health cost increase by 10%

MAGE
- Icy Veins and Bloodlust no longer stack
- Icy Veins no longer increase chance to freeze, but provide full pushback immunity for all spells while active.
- Mana cost of Blink and Slow reduced by 40%
- Improved blink changed to increase blink distance by 30%
- Prismatic Cloak buffed to 6% damage redux
- Arcane Fortitude buffed to 100% of intellect as armor
- Ice Floes now provides 30% pushback resist for ice spells
- Improved Fire Ward changed to 50% chance to reflect, and 4% less damage taken while active
- Improved Ice Armory type talent changed to 50% chance to reflect

PRIEST
- Mana burn cast time reduced to 2s base, amount of mana burned reduced 50%.
- Improved Mana burn increases burn amount by 20%. It is unclear whether or not it still provides cast time reduction
- Lightwell charges increased to 15.
- Focused will down to 4%.

ROGUE
- Envenom no longer consumes poison charges

WARRIOR
- Improved hamstring has a 10 second internal cooldown on the proc
- Endless rage fixed

SHAMAN
- 30% dispel resist on that threat redux nature talent
- Earth shield mana cost reduced by 50%
- Tremor totem and poison cleanse totem reduced from 5s pulses to 3s pulses (!!!!)

PALADIN
- Turn Undead works on demons now and will be renamed, so apparently you can fear-lock warlock pets, 10s duration with DR

DRUID
- Cyclone range reduced to 20 yards
- Lifebloom coeff reduced by $
- Treants now have a 15% chance to proc entangling roots
- Natural Perfection was nerfed slightly (don't remember numbers)

I have no problems with what is listed.  I hope they all happen.  Perhaps I'll experience a win in AV after this too (alliance.)

I do have to note one thing though.  Paladins are perfect and working as intended.  Huzzah!

3 tokens is anice change, but I'd gladly take just 2 tokens that weren't class locked. Tokens are meant to stop the dupe problem, but they didn't take it far enough. There's no reason to make them class oriented beyond frustrating your player-base and slowing things down, which they love to do for retention. However, 2 any-class tokens still means you are spending over 3-4 months on one boss getting everyone a piece. That's long enough Blizzard. If you can't produce content faster than every 4 months with all the money you have, you suck.

Stop being lazy and let raids decide where they want to put the tokens themselves.

PALADIN
- Turn Undead works on demons now and will be renamed, so apparently you can fear-lock warlock pets, 10s duration with DR

I looked at the Rogue change, laughed, and then realised it might make Envenom worth using now.

What?!  Making Turn Undead USEFUL!?  That's crazy talk.

Actually, that line doesn't make sense to me.  I'm pretty sure they took charges off of poisons a few patches back.  I'm a bit baffled.

Envenom is a Rogue ability that uses combo points and removes the Deadly Poison DoT effects on the target to do a package of Poison Direct Damage.

I actually completely forgot I even had that ability.  Seriously.  I don't think I've ever used it once since launch.

The better question is: with season 1 available for PvP honor points, is the new Blue quality Reputation based PvP loot going to be worth getting, or is it going to be more crap like the stuff available at haala, which generally seemed to suck pretty badly.

And now for some more...speculative patch notes:

Well, I know that.  So you are saying they are making it so only the combo points are reset upon execution of Envenom.  The number of poison applications to the target isn't reset?  I guess I wouldn't call those "charges."

If that is true, that is a pretty big change.  Envenom packs a whallop and could be used much more often.  That change might make me respec a bit...

Those would be huge Warlock nerfs.  PVP and raiding.  Improved Shadow Bolt would go from one of the better team talents, to.. well, not so good.   Why mess with Lifetap now after all this time?

The better question is: with season 1 available for PvP honor points, is the new Blue quality Reputation based PvP loot going to be worth getting, or is it going to be more crap like the stuff available at haala, which generally seemed to suck pretty badly.

Uh, they're planning on charging 57,000 honor and 130 marks for a set? Excitement over, I thought it was gold for resilience, not the same honor you were presumably saving for S1 PvP epics. Pointless.

Is there an approximate date?

Those are the old costs back before they got replaced by honor gear, they are obviously not going to charge exactly the same for season one and the blue gear it replaced.  Its going to cost gold.

Well, you know, the Lich King and Naxx are pretty closely linked, lore-wise. I wouldn't be surprised if it was involved somehow.

Warlock raid DPS has been due for a nerf.

I don't know about raids, but I level lots with a warlock and just from my layman's perspective they seem horribly overpowered.  The one I roll with does shitloads of damage, has fear and a bunch of other tricks, rarely needs healed, and never runs out of mana.  She literally never eats or drinks, and hands me the mana potions that drop like "Here, I never use these anyway."

They're horribly, grossly, ridiculously overpowered in raids.  Our top 'lock can do 10-12% of the total damage himself on any single fight.

If 17 people are doing damage you should average about 6% per person (if everyone has equal gear/ skill, etc...) The next closest is me or a rogue, depending on the fight, and the highest we get is 6-7% of the total.  Locks are fucking insane.

I looked at the Rogue change, laughed, and then realised it might make Envenom worth using now.

Locks were gimped when the game first came out.  Since then, it has been one long string of buffs after another, and they were WAY overpowered looooong before TBC ever came out.  Years.

Why would they limit Manna Biscuits to 80?

Seriously, what the fuck is going on over there? At some point you have to wonder how a company with more money than a Jesus made out of money can do this BADLY at content release.

And yet their game still looks like an English rock festival held on a rainy day in a muddy field. Its a grim, depressing place to be, and its filled with odd looking characters who appear to be stoned.

They removed the attunement quests to hyjal and black temple, made it so you can fight vashj and kael without clearing the other bosses in those zones and they are adding bt quality loot to the badge vendors.  Wow, they actually do get it.

The damage mods for Warsong Gulch are a step in the right direction. I hate flag stalemates.

Personally, I'd like to see a 15-20 minute timer on the damn BG, and ties give one mark each.

I really hate flag stalemates.

All it needs is reinforcements like av.  90 per side, each flag cap takes away 30 each kill takes away 1.

Good, fast, bug-free.

Pick two.

I also dig what they're doing with the T6 gear for the transition to SW from BT.

Basically they've added in boots, bracers and belt into the T6 set bringing it up to an 8 piece setup. The kicker is, no new set bonuses. Reason?

So you can still get the T6 set bonuses via the new 3 pieces +1 and also get the benefits of the ridiculously nasty T6.5 coming out of SW. I hope this trend continues into WotLK.

Come On, Righ, you KNOW better.

Most of the stuff I've read coming with WotLK (or heck, even just Sunwell) aren't all that world-turning. So what is really making things take so long?

Could it be business reasons? Seriously, there's business reasons to hold things out, and having missed Holiday 2007 season, they could have just decided to add an entire year. If you look at their history, they're not exactly "launch when it's ready" type folks. They're more like picking-a-great-market-window with a +/- of a few weeks. We often don't know what that market window is, but they need to at least a few months prior. You don't go from GM build to on-shelf overnight.

Could it also be the CGI movie? Seems the wrong reason to hold back an expansion, but given the fairly public perception that the BC movie was not as good as the launch one, they might be unwilling to having a less-than-perfect WotLK one. At this point, anything that puts a kink in the "we're for the gamers first and only" armor is a weakspot for competitors to exploit. And at this point, they can't afford to be glacial and late and not awesome, otherwise it wouldn't have been worth the wait.

Probably just overthinking it again.

Well, for some classes, the off-set legs/hat from BT/Hyjal are actually vastly superior to the t6. I am sure as soon as the belt drops, all of our tanks will go with the offset hat/legs and still keep 4pc.

I find the hunter itemization on those very odd. Hunter t6 has almost no hit on it, and the only way hunters can get close to the hit cap while wearing t6 is by wearing items with hit in the non-set slots. They did not put a single ounce of hit on those new t6 pieces.

I know that they won't. However, I know that when I was involved in, ah, more serious software, we did. The real vertex missing from the production triangle is COST. When you want something done fast and done well, you pay more, whether that be by employing better staff, employing more of them, working them longer hours for greater compensation, providing them with better resources to do the job quickly and well, or a combination of these and other factors. Its silly to say that something cannot be done well, fast and free of bugs. It can, but it will cost more. Blizzard are saving their money. Unfortunately, its likely to be mostly for paying shareholders of Vivendi or financing their idiotic losses elsewhere rather than the fannish hope that they're plowing it into the next great game. Most modern businesses are shit, and Blizzard is part of a spectacularly shit one.

Speaking of Lore and Nax:  I got into Durnhold early the other day and decided to visit Southshore and check out the Ashbringer discussion again while waiting for my group.  I was surprised to see Kel'thuzad walking up the path towards me.   CoT is such a nifty way to introduce lore into the game for the folks who don't know it.  They need to do a lot more with it.

2.4 is on the PTR (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html)

2.4 is on the PTR (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html)

Ya, WotLK is basically confirmed for after the summer time (demo @ the blizzard invitational).  2.4 is probably good till like end of march.

I'd guess 2 months, so April.

Ya, and thanks to Blizzard STILL refusing to move the PTR onto it's own hardware, the Reckoning battlegroup goes to total shit (last night the servers were up but for an hour everyone got "Error loading character list" messages when logging in) because they apparently are on the same hardware.

You can't bring nine women together and have a baby in a month.

Soooooo, when do we think the badge rewards are going to come out? Because I'd like to know if pounding kara over and over is the right idea instead of goofing around in ZA. I'm sure it will be, but this holding back bullshit is really quite ridiculous.

Soooooo, when do we think the badge rewards are going to come out? Because I'd like to know if pounding kara over and over is the right idea instead of goofing around in ZA. I'm sure it will be, but this holding back bullshit is really quite ridiculous.

There won't be large amounts of badge awards, probably a few odd spell haste pieces or items for classes/specs that were not available in the 2.3 batch. I say this simply because Blizzard said like 3 weeks ago that they "had no plans to add more Badge rewards".

Druids got a big fat nerf on their 4 piece PVP sets. No more Run speed bonus.  :ye_gods:

Uh, what? You can buy vortexes now for badge rewards. In fact I'm fairly sure they said they WOULD have more rewards. Hell, it's in the first post.

They haven't unlocked enough of the Shattered Sun Offensive for the badge vendors to show up is my understanding. Probably another week or two till we see what they have.






Druids got a big fat nerf on their 4 piece PVP sets. No more Run speed bonus.  :ye_gods:

Don't Druids have a travel form anyway?

Yes, and I believe this stacked onto it.  This is the main reason flag runners are typically druids.

They still will be.  They just won't be as uber.

Soooooo, when do we think the badge rewards are going to come out? Because I'd like to know if pounding kara over and over is the right idea instead of goofing around in ZA. I'm sure it will be, but this holding back bullshit is really quite ridiculous.

Goof around in ZA, it's a fun instance.

I have, it's really not.

Didn't you dislike Karazhan too? What is your definition of fun?

Kara has been nerfed thoroughly from the days you learnt it Paelos. It's now a piece of piss. Really, there are non-heroic 5mans that I found more challenging as a priest in PVP gear.

Kara has been nerfed thoroughly from the days you learnt it Paelos. It's now a piece of piss. Really, there are non-heroic 5mans that I found more challenging as a priest in PVP gear.

I love the 10 man instances.  Love love love.  The 25-mans though, just aren't fun at all.  I can't imagine what the 40-mans would have been like, but I've decided I'm rather glad I never did them.  Sadly, the raiding alliance I'm in is phasing out doing the 10 mans to focus on the 25-mans.  Between that and a bunch of other issues, my interest in raiding has plummeted.  I know it'll never happen, but I wish Blizzard would focus more on 10 mans for a lot of stuff as opposed to the way it seems now. 

I love the 10 man instances.  Love love love.  The 25-mans though, just aren't fun at all.  I can't imagine what the 40-mans would have been like, but I've decided I'm rather glad I never did them.  Sadly, the raiding alliance I'm in is phasing out doing the 10 mans to focus on the 25-mans.  Between that and a bunch of other issues, my interest in raiding has plummeted.  I know it'll never happen, but I wish Blizzard would focus more on 10 mans for a lot of stuff as opposed to the way it seems now. 

I'd consider that great news, then.  Hopefully that's how it pans out. 

I agree the dragonhawk trash is dumb but by and large it's a fun and cool instance, and I can't even imagine taking 2 days to do through it. To be fair, I did it with a raid leader who knew the stuff already but it wasn't nearly as time consuming as Kara. I'm not mocking your ability as a player, I just wonder at your constant insistence that the raids are shit and not fun, and the fact that you continue to do them.

 Fucking elitist gamer doucebags.

Basically, it always boils down to inconsistent trash mobs for me. I'd like to see some uniformity in the pacing of the instance, not quick stuff followed by horribly long/annoying stuff.

I love the 10 man instances.  Love love love.  The 25-mans though, just aren't fun at all.  I can't imagine what the 40-mans would have been like, but I've decided I'm rather glad I never did them.  Sadly, the raiding alliance I'm in is phasing out doing the 10 mans to focus on the 25-mans.  Between that and a bunch of other issues, my interest in raiding has plummeted.  I know it'll never happen, but I wish Blizzard would focus more on 10 mans for a lot of stuff as opposed to the way it seems now.

Honestly, the whole 'have to provide a challenge' thing is what causes 99% of the cockblocks in MMO design.  Of course, without those cockblocks the fear is that word of mouth would destroy the game because, "It's too easy."   Fucking elitist gamer doucebags.

For certain types of gamers there's no point playing any game if it's too easy. There's just... no point at all. I can't see how that is elitist.

My biggest problem with 10-mans is it fucks certain classes/ specs right in the ass.  Too many classes & specs to limit it down to just 10 people. 

All MMO PvE is easy.  All of it.  It just takes time.  The elitests that claim to be star players are often stars because they're the only ones able to commit the crazy amounts of time necessary to complete an encounter. 

Advantage for solo folks, the new dailies have about 4 which give out "shattered sun supplies" or somesuch.  It's a box with a green in it and about 20% of the ones I've gotten have also had a badge of justice.  So you can solo trickle accumulate badges.

Four dailies give out something with a 20% chance of a badge, but to buy crap with badges you need 50 or 100 badges.  So if you do dailies every single day and get one per day, you can get something after 50 days.

Solo trickle is right.

Isn't the solo mantra slower/harder but doable?

Is it just me, or do the Badge Rewards they released scream, "I hope you weren't expecting much!"

I'm very underwhelmed by them compared to the previous badge rewards they released.

Yeah, I'm a tanking warrior. The gear is actually a side-grade.

I guess everyone get's ignored occasionally then. The last round of badge gear was pretty insipid for hunters.

Why put it in? Because somewhere there's some guy who's gonna loudly post all over the general and warrior forums how superior that gear is to everything else available. Just like the people who insisted AQ40 hunter set gear was an upgrade over t2.

Some boss fights I enjoyed in the 40 man, but everything else was hell. 

For certain types of gamers there's no point playing any game if it's too easy. There's just... no point at all. I can't see how that is elitist.

Patch notes were updated again.

Nature’s Swiftness and Elemental Mastery now share a 10 second cooldown.  - Shaman pwnd.

At the upper end, and in a team they are pretty crazy. This is really being done to deal with the well-geared 40/0/21 build in arenas, and its an example of how all the arena balancing has a detrimental effect on 'lesser' geared people in different play.

Yeah, because shamen are too dominant a pvp force and desperately needed a nerf. 

I don't buy it.  Compare the number of 2k+ rated shamen to that of rogues, paladins, druids, warriors, warlocks, etc.  5v5 is really about the only place that a shaman is viable in arenas.  I'm going to do my best to prove this wrong, but I'm not optimistic.  Shaman just don't have the types of pvp tools that many other classes do. 

By the way, there's a major kerfuffle on the WoW boards. Seems that Kalgan's close friend/life partner Leiah blogged about Ele shammies needing the nerf a couple of weeks ago and posted on the warlock forums about it. Then he got account banned from the forums for a racial slur, and the shamans rose up in dotshock nerd rage. Sure made work go by quicker.

The Ret paladin gear also doesnt have any stamina on it. Speculation is that Blizz is doing it to make the pieces less attractive for PVP so players don't stack set bonuses for PVP and PVE gear

I think I may actually try a BG or two on 2.4 looking at the easy availability of the new blue-quality 5-piece PVP sets. With a couple other resilience pieces from PvE you could actually enter a BG not sporting S1+ gear and not instantly die!

Won't this cause a riot with the hardcore players?  I mean... if they have to press more than 3 buttons to kill someone there's a problem with the top tier gear.

I think I may actually try a BG or two on 2.4 looking at the easy availability of the new blue-quality 5-piece PVP sets. With a couple other resilience pieces from PvE you could actually enter a BG not sporting S1+ gear and not instantly die!

The stats don't show a lack of popularity for shaman, they just show a ridiculous popularity for other classes.

http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter=qu=3;sl=5:10:1:7:3;cr=82:12;crs=1:1;crv=0:0#0+1

The minor "mana from drinking now scales up to max over the first few ticks" nerf is now going to be Arena-only.

Precedent for seperate rulesets for Arena-PvP vs Other-PvP vs PvE!

I don't understand.  There is no drinking in Arenas.

Warlock lifetap change sounds huge, and very bad.  Instead of 1 hit point = 1 mana point, 16% hps = 16% mana.  Very very bad, this change.

I read on the general forum that they are reducing flight path speed by 34%.  I don't know if this is true, but if so, wtf, players are clamoring for Blizzard to put in more time sinks?  Flight path speed is fine as it is - in fact, faster would be better.

Anyone know why guilds would suddenly be scrambling for Lava Cores?  My GL's gotten tells from all the more-progressed guilds on Alleria, Including Risen, asking for Lava Cores and we can't figure out why.

If i had to guess, a lot of people are probably thinking of rolling out that crafted Axe that has a proc that increases magic damage done to target by 5%, which needs lava cores to craft.  Other then that, i havent a clue.  unless some obscure progression quest requires them.

Anyone know why guilds would suddenly be scrambling for Lava Cores?  My GL's gotten tells from all the more-progressed guilds on Alleria, Including Risen, asking for Lava Cores and we can't figure out why.

Nightfall is still great on any fight where OT's will be not required to tank for SOME phases of the fight - yes, there's a public thread and I posted the results. Nowadays with much higher caster dps, the proc is even higher - here's copy paste from guild forums



PS I see the context of the original Nightfall question implied Alleria server, which is funny.. due to myself (and another warrior in the guild now) soloing Garr every week, we've a ton of Lava Cores!

The 4.2 procs per minute is an observed rate at level 70 recorded by procwatch.

http://elitistjerks.com/582535-post34.html

Warlock lifetap change sounds huge, and very bad.  Instead of 1 hit point = 1 mana point, 16% hps = 16% mana.  Very very bad, this change.

So my warlock is still only level 58 or so, but this seems like a good change to me. My warlock has, even at low levels, about 3 1/2 times as much mana as life, so a 1% life -> 1% mana would still be a win over 100 life -> 140 mana or whatever the ratio is now.  Feel free to tell me where I'm wrong!

I think the major thing is that there is a perception that this change makes life tap scale inversely with gear.  In other words, the better geared you are, the worse you are at regenning mana.

Since life tap is the only realistic way a warlock regens mana, it makes it a big change.  Mages have their gems and evocation, shamans have their water shields, boomkins have their... well, lol.

They could be gunning to change this assumption that warlocks gear for +stam, but that seems pretty harsh to make the entire warlock contingent regear.  The only way to mitigate it would be to retool a metric shitload of warlock raid high-end gear.

There are supposed to be further Shaman changes to offset the recent nerfs. Notably Totem mechanic changes.

How about we start by not limiting them to a group, and instead make them raid wide?

NOT

GOING

TO

HAPPEN

EVER

Sorry to be blunt, but I have probably been following what shaman are about longer than you since I raided on Horde back in the Nefarian was the last boss days. Any and all suggestions about changing totems to work on more than the 5 man party will always fall on deaf ears.

I don't know, wouldn't making shammy buffs raid-wide sort of limit the amount of shammys people WANT to bring on a raid to 2?

Still, raid wide buffs would cut down on a ton of problems I have with the overall utility of that class.

Sure shamans can do lots of things, but what's advantage of a elemental shaman over a moonkin?

<Trouble> is there any reason to not bring 5 shamans to every raid assuming you can get that many
<XI> because you dont have 6
<manly> 5-6 is standard practice

I'm a resto spec shaman and have NEVER been asked to join a pug on Venture Co. for either a raid or a 5-man.   I think they've grown accustomed to using paladins since there are so many of them around.  

Most alliance people/guilds I know of are always desperately looking for even half decent shamans.

Most alliance people/guilds I know of are always desperately looking for even half decent shamans.

Anyone know why guilds would suddenly be scrambling for Lava Cores?  My GL's gotten tells from all the more-progressed guilds on Alleria, Including Risen, asking for Lava Cores and we can't figure out why.

that flametongue thing is WAYYY crazy.  giving shaman the ability to give EVERY person in your 5 man group a mortal strike ability is SICK.

toughness is a difficult call though, considering how few people would ever spec into it.

The totem timers thing is nice, but largely useless since they didn't give us a nice Totem Casting UI to go with it (yay, we have timers.  we still need 2 and a half FULL FUCKING BARS to stick all our totems on if using the default interface).

# The global cooldown on casting totems has been reduced. It is now 1 second instead of 1.5
# Flametongue Weapon now reduces the effectiveness of healing spells on your target by 50%. Lasts 5 seconds and refresh every hits.

It's also on the totem now.

(sorry to derail further)

Question is in regards to yellow statement - I'm alting an enhancement shaman (lvl 45 currently), and I have points in toughness.  Why is this bad?  Are enhancement shaman still sub-par? (I remember a conversation on this board from a year ago that indicated that enhancement shaman were ok for PvE, but poor for PvP).

I like the concept of a dual-weilding shaman who's a bit on the tougher side, but I don't want to beat my head against the wall on a class/subclass that's (even somewhat) craptacular, life is just too short.

Actually now that i think about it its not all that great.  Warriors and rogues can already ms and paladins + windfury are a joy to behold so i cant think of any reason why flametongue totem would be preferable to windfury.

The only other thing I Would mention about toughness. Is that it would also apply to flat out roots, like Druid and Mage roots.

5 seconds vs 10 is a pretty huge difference.

wait, shamanistic rage only lasts 15 seconds now? WTF.  That is going to put some hurt on enhance mana regen :/

Yeah the nerf is mostly because of the damage reduction, i guess thirty seconds of mini pain supression was a bit much.

Is FrostShock still on a DR timer? That is probably still the largest limiter.

I'm almost as excited about these (http://www.wowdb.com/item.aspx?id=34780) as I am the rep PVP armor.  I hate the whole "I need more cheese, they only sell meat here, I need more meat, they only sell bread, fuck I have 20 kinds of food on my hotbar" thing.  I was eating those Argent Dawn biscuits forever.

Not sure if it will help hunters though.  Does it count as a "generic" food?  as to players, doesent really help the stat food popping people anyway, since you will still have at least 3 types of food in your bags depending on situation and class.

Flametongue debuff now removes 25% of healing efficiency on the target for 5 seconds and stack up to two times. The duration remains 5 seconds.

Small change to FlameTongue again.
Now if they only made MS work like that.

- Do you think warrior tanks will ever get decent epic armor that drops in heroics?

Have at it.

That armor though? There are higher ranked blues, not to mention that all gets replaced in the first level of kara stuff.

The result?  Look at how imbalanced the population is with regards to healers and tanks.  At least in PvE you have a place.  In PvP, you're an anomoly.

I'm under the impression that people love healers in PVP, even if they do tend to get kerpwned first for the same reason.  As for tanks, yeah, you can't tank a player.  /shrug

I may not be an expert on warrior tanking, but i thought armor wasnt quite THAT important for warriors.  Armor value in itemization would be less important then block / parry / dodge stats, since Wars are usually all about the mitigation through avoidance thing arent they?  Druid tanks need high Armor values, since all they get are Armor and Dodge as damage mitigation.

On the most recent Blizzcast, they once again mentioned the idea of letting tanks taunt players, ie simply move their focus off their current target and onto the tank.  Once again they gave the ridiculous excuse that they don't want to add another form of cc to the game.

Firstly, that's the lightest form of cc conceivable (all you have to do is move your target back), and secondly, fucking mind control is OK but not taunt?  MIND CONTROL???

On the most recent Blizzcast, they once again mentioned the idea of letting tanks taunt players, ie simply move their focus off their current target and onto the tank.  Once again they gave the ridiculous excuse that they don't want to add another form of cc to the game.

Firstly, that's the lightest form of cc conceivable (all you have to do is move your target back), and secondly, fucking mind control is OK but not taunt?  MIND CONTROL???

Not to mention that this same function, less the retargeting, already exists in WoW PvP.  Hunters that feign death cause players to lose their targetting on them.

"WHERE ARE MY HEALS NUB"

- Do you think they will retune more of ZA and nerf it down with this patch?

I don't think it will be this patch, but I expect them to nerf the gauntlets and scouts 'soon'. Also wouldn't be shocked if they upped the number of badges and loot dropped per boss. In my experience, the gauntlet is the quickest raid killer. Or it's respawn I should say. Wipe a few times on a boss, oh look the Gaunt is back, yea lets call it a day. Heaven help you if someone has to go to the bathroom or something  during the 'cleared' time.  :ye_gods:

I also think we will eventually see the Tier set armor tokens just either be BoE or Badge purchasable.

Just go do Bagtheridon. 20 slot bag + bag of epic gems every kill.

And I guess he will click the cubes for you too.

Wha?  I haddn't heard anything about such major changes to Mag.. where'd you read it?

Is it just Alliance that fills up /bg chat with bitching, BTW?

I had the gaul to say "Man, hella fun AV so far, very hard fought on both sides" when in a 25 min AV that resulted in basically both sides getting pushed and pushing back and forth all across the map.

There were literally 5-10 responses along the line of: "stfu noob, this is the WORST AV EVER, 25 MINS FOR 400 HONOR, GAH".

:(

There were literally 5-10 responses along the line of: "stfu noob, this is the WORST AV EVER, 25 MINS FOR 400 HONOR, GAH".

:(

We had an AB where someone was trying to direct everyone to 'ATTACK NODE SO-AND-SO AS A GROUP' and other such bad advice, and when said stupid advice was ignored he would start swearing and yelling at people. We finally had enough and looked on the map to see what this guy was doing. He was hiding up at the Lumber Mill, in behind where the buff pops. When we called him on it, he said that it's easier for him to direct his troops from up there. o.O

The 25-limit is only because of the # of dailies they're adding for the Sunwell area.  No idea how many are going in there, though.

While you can't turn off battleground chat:

Did you know that you can right-click <random idiot's> name and /ignore it?

It adds tremendously to my enjoyment of the battlegrounds. 

When your /ignore list grows to large, delete every name and start over.

+100 happiness guaranteed.

/report spam is better, it puts them on some form of (I assume it is temporary) ignore list that is not your usual ignore list, and if enough people do it, the assmunches could get banned for being a gold seller if blizzard makes a mistake in investigating :)

I havent done a single daily since i figured out i can make large prismatic shards for about 15g worth of mats and they sell for 30g.  When a new arena season is about to come out i might start doing the bg dailies for honor.

Which one? The netherweave robe?

On the rare occasion I add cooking in, it's only 7.  Netherwing might put me over if I can just make that last 1500g for my fast flying skill.

I havent done a single daily since i figured out i can make large prismatic shards for about 15g worth of mats and they sell for 30g.  When a new arena season is about to come out i might start doing the bg dailies for honor.

I can't bring myself to do any daily but the BG one and maybe (big maybe) the heroic one on my mage if it's a heroic I haven't run before.


Don't know why.

Of course, as alliance, the daily BG is anything but 'fun' or a 'mellow way to play'.  :ye_gods:

Well, unless it's AV [which alliance tend to win on our battlegroup, unlike most other b'groups].


-- Z.

Got the threads crossed here.  But the cool thing about 2.4 is the dimishing returns get knocked off of people.  This means things like Halaa raids and general world PVP can actually generate a fair amount of honor points.

They seriously need to unfuck WSG stat. If there was EVER an instance that cried out for "reinforcements" it's that one instead of AV.

They seriously need to unfuck WSG stat. If there was EVER an instance that cried out for "reinforcements" it's that one instead of AV.

They seriously need to unfuck WSG stat. If there was EVER an instance that cried out for "reinforcements" it's that one instead of AV.

The Trick to WSG is being the one holding the flag. Then you get to decide how long the games last  :awesome_for_real:

Lately, I've been a lot of successful WSG instances.  The main strategy is to just throw the entire team at the flag.  Usually, the other side will do the same so getting the flag is a snap.  If they have a few sitting on D, all the better.  We wipe them, take the flag and now their Flag team is short.

As we cross back midfield, we engage their flag group and attempt to kill their flag carrier while ours slips past up to our hold.  9 times out of 10 this works because they cannot withstand the zerg.  I can't say it was just strat alone because it still takes competent PvP'ers and gear is always a factor, but out of all the other strategies I've seen this seems to work best.

Occasionally, you get a group that does the exact same strat and just has the better players/gear and beats us, but it is usually a really quick game.  You basically do 3-5 trips back and forth.  That last flag is easy because it is just a race.  Don't worry about their flag if you are one flag up on them.  Just get the 3 cap.

Once in a while we get teams that are even and both flags go down on a pass, but it is rare.  The whole hiding the flag and having groups on D and O just take for EVER and are a crapshoot on a win.  Sticking together throughout makes your healers more effective and the healers get the protection they need.  I've been doing WSG with 0 deaths lately due to this.

Well, I have to admit that for some reason my PUG groups have just fallen into this strat.  It wasn't explained.  Everyone just did it.

I really can't explain it.

Well, I have to admit that for some reason my PUG groups have just fallen into this strat.  It wasn't explained.  Everyone just did it.

I really can't explain it.

Doesn't help that the more players an AOE spell hits, the less damage it does per target. 

Huh?  Where did you get that from?  I haven't noticed this at all in WoW and can't find a mention of it on WoWWiki at all..

The "AE" nerf, anything over 10 tgts and it cuts the dmg per tick down by dividing the amount of total dmg allowed per tick/number of tgts. Was put in around the time of BC release.

Go into BM with a pally tank, have them rustle up about 30 crocs and spiders and cats, then pop an AE spell. The dmg decrease is pretty substantial. I guess they are upping the total dmg allowed in 2.4 though.

I don't like that change due to Arcane Explosion.  That crap is nearly impossible to heal when facing a well geared mage.  One mage can turn a 2 to 1 battle to their side within seconds.  Even if you have a priest kicking out instant AOE heals (Holy Nova) at the same time, they don't heal enough to keep up and I'm pretty sure the mana usage isn't balanced either.  A healadin like myself has no chance as all my heals are single target, timed.

(I believe this is 10 but I could be wrong)

I am reading your post as you are thinking the AE is having a larger effect on 2 targets than it would on say, 6 or 7. That is not the case, the AE modifiers only come into effect when there are n+1 tgts in range, n being the max pre-capped amount (I believe this is 10 but I could be wrong). Arcane explosion does the same amount of dmg per tgt to 1 target as it does to 8 targets.

Silence the healer and 3 shot the mage?