Upcoming patch notes, test servers going live

[Trippy]

More detailed information about the upcoming patch:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/patch-05-03-04.html


Information about upcoming test servers:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=1806260&p=1&tmp=1#post1806260

[ahoythematey]

This better not be a band-aid to distract us from their less-than-half assed handling of WoW Live...

[Toast]

There's a lot of stuff in the patch notes. I wonder why they aggregated so much into one patch instead of parcelling out into smaller, more frequent rollouts?

[sidereal]

Charge has been improved so it will work through doorways and won't path you through an entire dungeon.

Thank you, sirs.  There's nothing quite so exhilerating as trying to charge someone through a doorway, but instead shooting around a corner, up three flights of stairs, down an elevator, and over a balcony to get to them, meanwhile picking up 70 new friends.

[Calantus]

Wow there is alot of stuff... some of it I was like "damn that's good", so they have been working. Would have been better with more frequent smaller updates, but I guess this is how Blizzard operates. Still digesting it all, but I wanted to point this one out:

- Added /golfclap.

Heh.

[MrHat]

Wow there is alot of stuff... some of it I was like "damn that's good", so they have been working. Would have been better with more frequent smaller updates, but I guess this is how Blizzard operates. Still digesting it all, but I wanted to point this one out:

- Added /golfclap.

Heh.

They have been promising more frequent patches after this one.  I don't believe them.

[schild]

They have been promising more frequent patches after this one.  I don't believe them.

/golfclap

[Jayce]

Looks like warriors are the only ones who got their training prices increased.  Everyone else decreased.

 

[Calantus]

Looks like warriors are the only ones who got their training prices increased.  Everyone else decreased.

 

That's actually fair though. I was always disgusted to see my brother's training costs every 2nd level when compared to my own.

[Signe]

You can only get on the test servers by special invitation?  How is that right?

[MrHat]

You can only get on the test servers by special invitation?  How is that right?

I guess that keeps it more hush hush.

[schild]

You can only get on the test servers by special invitation?  How is that right?

I guess that keeps it more hush hush.

Like Orkut or Friendster or B2? Yea, that'll work out well.

[Paelos]

Looks like warriors are the only ones who got their training prices increased.  Everyone else decreased.

 

That's actually fair though. I was always disgusted to see my brother's training costs every 2nd level when compared to my own.

Heroic strike gets love - This is good news.
Thunderclap gets massive love - This is great news.
Execute doesn't sink your rage on a miss - Duh. This shouldn't have been the case anyway
They apparently fixed a bug where rage wasn't being generated - frankly I'm not shocked at all.
They added some visual proc on swords - shiney!

Guess this means it's time to respec back to arms. I've been a fury warrior for leveling, but if this is the case, suddenly the main arms arsenal is much stronger. We still need to see defensive specs revamped. As of now they are horrid for many reasons, namely holding aggro without doing a million stance-dances.

[Chenghiz]

After seeing that Druid PvP video that was floating around the WoW forums for a while ago, I'm not so sure that Druids needed that much lovin,' but my Druid friend assures me that they do.

Fixed a bug where creatures were keeping their innate resistances after being tamed. This was unintentional and the fix will affect all existing pets.

This makes me sad. I wish they would leave in some means of having a distinctive pet other than its speed and attack rate. Now every min/maxer and their mother will have King Bangalash.

You can no longer use Eyes of the Beast to leave a flight path.

I'd better try this before they patch it (=

[Jayce]

love

My favorite thing is that we can now overpower after the opponent dodges a special attack.  I thought that was intentional because they (at least mobs) seem to dodge specials more than they dodge straight attacks.

It's overpower 4tw now though!  Improved overpower is reason enough for the arms tree in and of itself.

[XMackenzie]

The Warrior training cost increase sorta miffed me  - but thankfully it was the first thing followed up by, this is better and that is better now updates.  When I saw those patch notes the first thing that came to my head was - "man I got a warrior to 40 before they were FOTM!"  Changes look great for an arms specced warrior.  Only downside is that now I need to actually bother buying thunderclap from the trainer at a higher cost. 

[murdoc]

You can only get on the test servers by special invitation?  How is that right?

Moving forward, all players who have an active World of Warcraft account will be eligible to participate in testing on the test realms. However, this initial testing phase requires characters between the levels of 55 and 60 in order to properly test the content and functionality for the next patch

[Alkiera]

That's a long list of changes.  One in particular amused me...

Previously, in many cases, a Block, Parry, or Dodge was translated into a "Miss," thus causing confusion over actual miss rates. We've made the following changes in an attempt to be more clear as to what is actually happening in combat:

    * Block: All creatures will now report a Block on attacks from the front, reducing damage caused instead of converting the attack into a "Miss." Creatures will no longer be able to Block attacks from behind.
    * Dodge: Every time a creature Dodges, it will report a Dodge. We will no longer translate a creature's Dodge of a rear attack to a "Miss."
    * Parry: All creatures will now report a Parry on attacks from the front instead of translating them into a "Miss." Creatures will no longer be able to Parry attacks from behind.

Wow.  Just.... wow.

Alkiera

[jpark]

Not sure if I am reading this right - seems that Power Word Shield (Priest) is now castable on other members - not just himself.  A very powerful spell, that's a huge change since it was previously self only.

Am I reading this right?  I wonder if the timer affects the target as well - otherwise you could line priests up on a raid and have constant PWS coverage of a mage or tank (single target).

[Rasix]

Not sure if I am reading this right - seems that Power Word Shield (Priest) is now castable on other members - not just himself.  A very powerful spell, that's a huge change since it was previously self only.

Am I reading this right?  I wonder if the timer affects the target as well - otherwise you could line priests up on a raid and have constant PWS coverage of a mage or tank (single target).

You're not.   PW:S is now castable on all raid group members not just the group the priest is a member of.

And you can't chain it.  The weakened soul effect is per target.  So you just can't chain it on someone.  Fastest would be every 15 seconds depending on the talent spec of the priest.

Just curious, but do you actually play WoW?

[Sky]

I wish they would leave in some means of having a distinctive pet other than its speed and attack rate. Now every min/maxer and their mother will have King Bangalash

No kidding. What we needed was /more/ pet differentiation, not less. This sucks. Hunters figure pet speed differentials is the next to go, so King B and friends will no longer be desirable, either. I have a King, but I prefer my Longtooth Runner, which fits my character better. I was going to grab Snarler, because he also fits my orc hunter with worg vibe, but now he's crappy as his resists are what made him interesting. I guess I may as well stick with my Longtooth and get a bear for heavy tanking, just like every other motherlover on the server.

[ahoythematey]

Lo and behold, more warlock nerfs, and to Fear of all things.  What in the FUCK is going through their minds?  Are they deliberately trying to hurt me, or are they all really this goddamn dumb?

[HaemishM]

I fail to understand why high-end dungeons now need player caps. Is this a sop to the uber cocksuckers, who think that the ability to organize 70 people is somehow a bad thing (OH NOES, THE ZERG!)? Or is it just Furor and Tigole getting their rocks off by saying "J00 R NOT L33t IF YOU CAN'T DO IT WITH 40! PWNED N00BL3R!!1@1!2"

Fuckers.

[Paelos]

I fail to understand why high-end dungeons now need player caps. Is this a sop to the uber cocksuckers, who think that the ability to organize 70 people is somehow a bad thing (OH NOES, THE ZERG!)? Or is it just Furor and Tigole getting their rocks off by saying "J00 R NOT L33t IF YOU CAN'T DO IT WITH 40! PWNED N00BL3R!!1@1!2"

Fuckers.

It's probably to adjust for a player/drop ratio involved in each instance raid. Or such is my guess.

[trias_e]

I like it.   I like challenges.  Other people are usually pussies and try to avoid challenges by gathering as many people as they possibly can for absolutely anything.

[HaemishM]

Having led what could be considered "zerg" raids before, I can tell you that it is nothing like easy. Brute force is great, but the application of that force requires assloads of organization. It's like trying to herd cats, especially when you do the raids with people you don't even know. I say this as someone who has led dragon raids in the olden days of EQ with 50+ people from 15 different guilds when the only raid channel I had available was /shout or /ooc.

I will say it's much more fun doing it with people you know and less numbers, but it's still challenging mustering the zerg.

[Rasix]

I fail to understand why high-end dungeons now need player caps. Is this a sop to the uber cocksuckers, who think that the ability to organize 70 people is somehow a bad thing (OH NOES, THE ZERG!)? Or is it just Furor and Tigole getting their rocks off by saying "J00 R NOT L33t IF YOU CAN'T DO IT WITH 40! PWNED N00BL3R!!1@1!2"

Fuckers.

This is the one part of the patch that somewhat irks me.  After a patch, if a guild wants to do a raid encounter they're either going to have to hit MC, Onyx or hope one of the outdoor ones is up (OOOH, EQ dragon races, how I didn't miss that one bit).  Molten Core, while not being sure on the prereqs for getting in, I'd imagine takes an assload of time and is probably outside the abilities of our guild (not enough warriors/priests).  Onyxia you have to key up for and that ends in a quest that's in Blackrock Spire.  Again, even if we were keyed, Onyxia is probably well out of our abilities.  We're the uber guild on a somewhat backwater server, so we're not you're typical Afterlife/Conquest/FoH entity.  We're actually pretty casual for a raid guild as we usually only target one place per raid day and only one run per outting.  (BTW, I think 40 was the cap regardless as that's the raid group max size)

Having MC/Onyxia being your only 15+ member options doesn't help if you can't get 40 people online all of the time and don't have the ability to currently tackle them.  Our guild simply zergs BRS and other places because right now that's all we have available to us.  How is splitting the guild into separate groups for upper BRS raiding going to not suck.  There just isn't anything that falls between the 15 to full raid group encounter.  Also if there's say 25 people online, it's more than likely just going to be the first 15 on and everyone else can go play their fucking alts or slum it through lower BRS if you still need some quest kills there.

God, this isn't even mentioning the pathing problems that some of these dungeons have, where unless you're zerging it, HELLO WIPE. And kiss the sub 2 hour upper BRS goodbye.  Some of these dungeons, unless you're zerging them, are just really fucking long if you want to do a complete sweep (not to mention in some places really fucking difficult).  This means doing Strath you're either hitting the scarlet crusade or going baron, but hahaha, don't try both unless you've got a day to waste there. 

I don't like this.  There's nothing for a guild that isn't quite up to snuff for Onyxia/MC without breaking your guild into smaller groups.  And for guilds that average about 20-30 people online for raids, this is going to blow.   Fuck, I can now expect us to be hitting UBRS every single day until patch to get as many people their Onyxia quest drops before 2 hour UBRS runs are a thing of the past.   

I know that they're doing this to prevent people from trivializing their higher tier content, but these caps don't help when there's large gaps in group size for these encounters, these encounter's dififculty can be magnified by amount of pathing and other bugs present, and without zerging these encounters can take quite a bit of time due to all of the filler crap between the actual worthwhile encounters.   GAH.

[Rasix]

I like it.   I like challenges.  Other people are usually pussies and try to avoid challenges by gathering as many people as they possibly can for absolutely anything.

Often it's not trying to avoid the challenge of an encounter, it's trying to make sure all of your guild members can participate.  Not everyone says "hey, we've got too many people, this isn't challenging.  GO HOME GROUP 4 AND FARM CASH."

[MrHat]

Only instance I haven't done with 7 people is Molten Core.

[trias_e]

Having led what could be considered "zerg" raids before, I can tell you that it is nothing like easy. Brute force is great, but the application of that force requires assloads of organization. It's like trying to herd cats, especially when you do the raids with people you don't even know. I say this as someone who has led dragon raids in the olden days of EQ with 50+ people from 15 different guilds when the only raid channel I had available was /shout or /ooc.

This is true, and there was basically only one guy who could reliably organize 70+ person pickup raids on my server/realm in DAOC and make everything work without much gnashing of teeth.  However, I don't necessarily think that should be the main skill required to succeed on raids, so I still like WoW's changes.  Also, the main thing that was bothering me in WoW was people getting 20+ to take out dungeons that can be done with 5-10.  The 10 man cap is great for those instances, since it seemed to be wide-spreadly believed that you needed so many people to do them (which was just wrong and based on the fact that people seem to avoid challenges most of the time).

I haven't hit the raid game yet, but it definitely does seem that Onyxia is too difficult an initial raid target.  However, this still doesn't change the above fact.  Just means they need to fix that.  I know I wouldn't have fun zerging UBRS with my guild every night.

Often it's not trying to avoid the challenge of an encounter, it's trying to make sure all of your guild members can participate.  Not everyone says "hey, we've got too many people, this isn't challenging.  GO HOME GROUP 4 AND FARM CASH."

I really don't see what the big deal is with seperating into more than 1 group is for say UBRS.  If you have more than 40 members and are complaining about the limits on onyxia...that could be a problem.  I don't like huge guilds however, so luckily, I'll avoid that problem.

[WayAbvPar]

A new engineering recipe is available in Blackrock Depths for a repair robot. This robot acts as a repair vendor for 10 minutes and will repair and purchase items for normal cost. This will allow dungeon groups and raids to get items repaired and sold without returning to town.

That is cool. It sounds kind of cheesy, but it beats having to destroy the less desirable loot.

[Rasix]

I really don't see what the big deal is with seperating into more than 1 group is for say UBRS.  If you have more than 40 members and are complaining about the limits on onyxia...that could be a problem.  I don't like huge guilds however, so luckily, I'll avoid that problem.

This is more likely a problem more specific to my guild and guilds like it.  We have poor class balance (lots of hunters/warlocks)  and we typically have 20-30 people on per night for raids.  Until we grow up a bit, this really won't be possible.   We're not a huge guild, we're just simply large and the only game in town for high end raiding on our podunk server (horde side that is).

[Threash]

Strath and scholo with 10 people are NOT a challenge, UBRS with 15 is NOT a challenge.  That change doesn't affect 95% of the raids who already used those numbers for those dungeons, frankly taking more just makes it a frustrating mess, i usually just ditched raids that took more than that anyways.  If you want a challenge 5 man strath, scholo and LBRS like they where supposed too, you'll have a much better chance at loot and you'll get better at playing your char.

[Rasix]

Strath and scholo with 10 people are NOT a challenge, UBRS with 15 is NOT a challenge.

From what I've seen, you're right.  Not sure if you're trying to rebuke anything I said, but it's not really an issue of challenge, it's just that's there's nothing out there for guild that doesn't quite have the tools for Onyxia or Molten Core.

If you want a challenge 5 man strath, scholo and LBRS like they where supposed too, you'll have a much better chance at loot and you'll get better at playing your char.

Now, if you can step off the badass podium for just a second, wouldn't 5 manning those instances take for-fucking-ever (never been to Scholo, so I don't know there)?  Strath and LBRS just have a ton of fodder you have to mow through before you get to any of the juicy bits. 

[MrHat]

Strath with 7 peeps last night took about 2 hours and no wipes.

It's funny because with 15 people we wipe more often.