Posted on October 14th, 2008 by admin
Skill Mastery: Bloodsurge
While a lot of debate goes back and forth about how much damage Fury is doing in Wrath, and how fun the tree is, there’s one fury talent that is unabashedly awesome in my opinion: Bloodsurge. Bloodsurge is a pure delight to use, and is a perfect example of synergy in action: the Fury tree stacking a boost to critical hit with the new Rampage (which we will also be spotlighting, never fear) which causes your Bloodthirsts to crit, which gives you an instant cast Slam with a high chance to crit as well.
It’s quite possibly my favorite Fury ability (yes, even more so than Titan’s Grip, which I am currently back in love with – I know you were all pulling for us crazy kids to make it) just for the fun of hearing the swoosh-bang on a BT crit. That sound means hit the slam button for extra damage! It’s like getting all cherries on the slot machine, but without having to sit with all those people feeding quarters into the boxes with that desperate, hardened stare. Those folks scare me. I get the sense they’d like an instant cast slam
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Posted on October 14th, 2008 by admin
BlizzCon 2008: The first day of mayhem
The crowds have been let in to the main convention center floor, and it is an absolute mad house of Blizzard fun here. BlizzCon 2008 has started in earnest, with a full day of panels and gaming ahead. Knowing Blizzard, it should be truly epic.
If you weren’t able to join us here at the Anaheim Convention Center, have no fear. As the day progresses, we’ll share many of the sights of BlizzCon 2008, straight from the front lines. So if you’re hungry for more of what’s going on here, be sure to check back, as we’ll be updating the gallery throughout the day!
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Posted on October 12th, 2008 by admin
Throughout my time in beta, I’ve primarily leveled and secondarily worked on my professions. I’ve managed, farming for no more than a tenth of my time in game, to get my jewelcrafting up to about 410, my mining maxed, and my first aid high enough to make the top end bandage. However, in all that time I’ve not been able to collect enough meat to get my cooking higher than 385 or so.
Part of the reason is the lack of good skillup recipes, which I think is either a bug or oversight. Where my character’s skill is at, I can make a great number of green skill items, a single yellow skill item that takes about 7 times the materials as any of the greens, and no oranges. The problem of skilling up is compounded by the fact that my yellow recipe, Great Feast, requires three types of meat that are each about a 5% drop off of different types of animals.
Now, I’m fairly sure that there will be more mid-level recipes, either which have not been implemented yet, or which I have not found, but is it possible that high level cooks could get a passive ability from their
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Posted on October 10th, 2008 by admin
Ornate vs Stormhide & other crafted PVP gear
Does anyone else feel Ornate is pretty lackluster for being the starting PVP set?
It is supposed to be the equivalent for PVP that one would get out of using the best blues from high level PVEs, but Ornate seems lacking.
Ornate has mostly sta, int on 2 pieces (one of which, the belt has str/sta/int and no spellpower).
Now compare the shaman and paladin entry lvl PVP sets.
Ornate for pally
Stormhide for shaman
Every Piece of the stormhide armor has Sta/Int Spellpower and Mp5.
If you look at overcast armor it has everything an entry level druid would need. Sta/Int/Spit and spellpower.
stats comparison:
Ornate:
sta – 567
int – 87
spellpower – 437
mp5 – 36
crit – 139
and like 40 str too, which i don’t know wtf its there for but its on the belt…
Stormhide:
sta – 448
int – 300
spellpower – 526
mp5 – 120
Overcast (druid):
sta – 450
int – 300
spellpower – 527
spirit – 299
Now… paladins get a ton of stamina. But at the cost of spellpower and int
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Posted on October 9th, 2008 by admin
1H vs. 2H enchants, discrepencies
As Blizzard seems so intent on allowing DKs to have both their DW and 2H scale up relatively equal, this made me think… There are many scaling factors that eventually mean at X gear level, DW > 2H. Enchants are a factor in this. If someone is DWing, they get the benefit of two mongoose enchants, or two berserking enchants.
I propose that for 1H enchants such as Mongoose, Crusader, etc. (enchants that have no 2H counterpart) either have a 2H enchant created that is proportional, or have a doubled effect when the wielder is using a single weapon (as to account for warriors with TG).
DKs, Feral Druids (who can now benefit from weapon procs), and Arms Warriors would all benefit from such a change, and other classes would not be decreased in power. This change simply slows the rate at which DW becomes > 2H.
Another way to do this is to allow 2Hs to have two enchantment effects on them. This way, the “problem” of only having to get one enchant as opposed to two is solved (and this allows for the same diversity that DW’ers
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Posted on October 7th, 2008 by admin
The report from the base of the game, World of Warcraft Arena points in the fourth quarter of Europe service will be held on October 14 settlement, the Wrath of the Lich King for the last time before the contents of the patch 3.0.2 (that is, the player known as “on the eve of the ice,” The official name of “the end of the response”) may also be in sync on the revision on the line. The revision would weaken the Burning Crusade copy of the monster head and blood, remove the sun well in the highlands, “the sun of the glorious well,” the effect will make all the people well when the arrival of the sun. “World of Warcraft” Wrath of the Lich King revision before the final revision on Patch3.0.2 said.
“This year on October 2 in Europe,” World of Warcraft, “the official website of the Forum’s blue note that the S4 arena points will be settled on October 14, the official also disclosed that the revision of” World of Warcraft: Wu Wang demon of anger “before the last Patch 3.0.2″ on the eve of the ice
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Posted on October 7th, 2008 by admin
Ask a Beta Tester: Raid zones, plot, and more on phasing
I decided to do something a little different with the image above for today’s Ask a Beta Tester. Instead of beating you over the head with another of my awesome Dalaran screenshots, I’ve plugged in some music you can listen to while you read, if you’d like. Just hit play, and get in a Wrath kind of mood.
Milkgas asked quite a few question, but many of them involve story spoilers that I don’t think readers would appreciate seeing in this particular column. What I don’t answer, you can truck over to Ask a Lore Nerd and I’ll squeeze them in on the bottom behind my usual “spoilers be here, yarrrr” line. We can definitely hit a few of them though.
Has there been any hints in the quest text of either the Uldum or the Karazhan Basement as a raid or dungeon in this expansion or the next?
Nothing that I’ve seen! We’ll have Ulduar as a raid zone in Northrend, so to me that seems like a definite no on Uldum. I don’t think they would put two Titan raids in one expansion, unless
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Posted on October 6th, 2008 by admin
Stepping away from +threat
Threat is at the heart of tanking. However, it’s totally hidden from the player, and many players don’t understand it well or at all. A thumbnail sketch: every point of damage you do causes 1 threat. Every point of healing you do causes 0.5 threat (unless you’re a paladin, in which case it’s 0.25 for reasons I’ve never fully understood). This is base threat; many classes have threat modifiers. Rogues, for instance, have an innate 30% reduction to threat. Warriors and Druids get 30% improved threat in their tanking modes (Defensive Stance/Dire Bear Form); this will be raised to 45% in LK, I believe. Paladins get 90% extra threat for their Holy damage from Righteous Fury.
Then there are various tanking skills which have special threat modifiers. Sunder Armor is one that has been around forever; it wouldn’t cause much threat inherently, but it’s got extra threat built in. Lacerate and Revenge are other examples.
In short, the way Blizzard has traditionally made tanking work – made sure the tanks are causing more threat
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Posted on October 6th, 2008 by admin
Koraa chats about Priests
We’re a little miffed about recent priest changes here at WoW Insider. Both Holy and Shadow were worked over pretty well with the nerf bat in build 8926. Fortunately, Koraa (class designer) has announced some upcoming changes that are, for the most part, buffs, and that show that they’re definitely thinking about the class. Let’s see what’s behind the curtain.
· Holy:
· Holy Concentration will “scale with spell crit instead of just a flat %.” I read this as meaning that instead of being a 6% chance to gain HC, the chance will be some fraction of your Holy crit chance. But why not just make it a 50% (or whatever) chance on heal crit?
· Divine Hymn now has an HoT in addition to the CC. This makes it more obviously a clutch spell, and I think it will be handy.
· Blessed Recovery is getting buffed to “roll” like Ignites do used to: each new crit will add to the HoT and refresh the duration.
· Lightwell is gaining the ability to show
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Posted on October 6th, 2008 by admin
[EDITED] Paladin changes in Beta build 8962
Unlike last build, where Paladins got so many important changes it took me two posts to cover them all, we get just a little love this Beta build. So little, in fact, that I didn’t bother writing it up until now. For those curious Paladins, however, here are the goodies (and baddies) that popped up in Beta build 8962.
Protection
Hammer of the Righteous was changed from a triple-target Crusader Strike — which was kind of silly, really — into a weapon strike that works off DPS as base damage. The spell now reads: “Hammer the current target and up to 2 additional nearby targets, causing 3 times your main hand damage per second as Holy damage.” Which means that even fast one-handed weapons work well with the spell because it calculates from DPS. It makes perfect sense and is a definitive step away spell damage weapons, which traditionally have low DPS. Meanwhile, Improved Devotion Aura’s healing effect was also buffed to a maximum of 6%, up from 3%, and Toughness was nerfed to a 30% duration reduction for
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