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PTR notes: Up on the roof
It's always nice when Alliance pay a diplomatic visit to Orgrimmar. The ambassadors -- usually of the night elf variety -- tend to sit on the bank's roof, naked and dancing, until the point when some brave Hordie decides to attack the dancer. Then out come the stealthed rogues. But Alliance are no longer welcome in the Horde capital. As of the 2.1.0 test realm, there are Troll Roof Stalkers on top of the Orgrimmar bank. These level 70 elites are apparently intended to keep Alliance out of Org. Many people are angry at what they consider a new chapter in Blizzard's war on fun, but it's unlikely that enough Alliance enjoy hanging out in Orgrimmar to mount serious protests. Heck, I'm Horde and I don't even like hanging out in Orgrimmar. It looks like it was designed by the army surplus tent store. Personally, I don't consider this a game-breaking nerf -- but then again, I'm Hordeside. I do understand why it seems unfair, so I will accede to the placement of Gnome Shin Kickers in the Deeprun Tram if this change goes live. Also, I agree that Troll Roof Stalkers would be a great band name. What do you think about this change?
PTR notes: get your epic BoEs crafted now
Wow, I sure am glad I came across this in my internet travels yesterday, since I seem to have missed it in the patch notes. But there it is: when 2.1 goes live, "The Epic bind on equip Blacksmith weapon recipes now require more materials to make." How much more, you ask? The image above (via World of Raids) shows the new recipes. Here's how they compare to the old: Khorium Champion: Four more Primal Nethers Felsteel Reaper: Ten Khorium bars (no Khorium required previously), four more PNs Hand of Eternity: Ten Khorium bars, two more PNs Felsteel Longblade: Ten Khorium bars, four more PNs Eternium Runed Blade: Four Felsteel changed to ten Khorium and four Hardened Adamantite; two more PNs Dirge: Ten Khorium bars, two more PNs Fel Edged Battleaxe: Ten Khorium bars, two more PNs Fel Hardened Maul: Ten Khorium bars, four more PNs Runic Hammer: Ten Khorium bars, two more PNs Guess I better get a move on farming the mights for my Hand of Eternity. The price impact of this change will vary depending on the crafters you know, but based on the rates I've seen should be a few hundred gold. Fortunately, it doesn't look like the patch is going up today, so we have at least a week to get our mats together.
PTR notes: Exalted with Netherwing
Wondering what exactly happens when you get exalted with the Netherwing faction to get that neat flying drake? Joni of Malygos has done the grind on the test realm and has some information for all would-be dragonriders. After pretending to work for (and sabotaging) the Fel Orcs, she had to race six netherdrakes at honored reputation. On the way to exalted, she could complete 9 daily quests for reputation with the Netherwing. Finally, she hit exalted and got her "reward" from the Fel Orcs ... a personal audience with Illidan. Oops. Looks like those magical eyes can see through your disguise, and you'd be pretty much boned if the Netherwings didn't come down and save you. Joni ended up being flown to Shattrath and getting to pick a free netherdrake from a number of available colors. The questline also gave her a nice trinket that summons a netherwhelp as a combat pet! She says the grind will take a non-human about two weeks if you do all the daily quests each day, and she plans on writing up a Netherwing guide to help those of us who are a little less motivated to do the whole thing on the PTR. Congratulations, Joni, and may you fly your dragon proudly through the skies of the test realm.
PTR notes: Not-so-Clearcasting for Shamans
By now, you've probably at least heard (perhaps in haiku form) that shamans are facing a serious nerf in the upcoming patch. As a Resto/Elemental shaman, I figured I'd take a few minutes to lay out for you just what we, your trusty totem-dropping buddies, will be facing.Y'see, there's this ability called Clearcasting. Mages, priests, shaman, and druids can all get it under certain specs-- it basically gives you a mana-free spell every few casts, the percentage of which changes by class. Mages at full spec get a 10% chance, Druids get it as a chance on melee attack, and priests get it as a usable ability (with a 3 minute cooldown).Now, this talent is especially useful for Shaman, since we are notoriously mana inefficient-- supposedly, that's our tradeoff for being able to melee, heal, and cast damage spells. Way back when, the Clearcasting talent (in the Elemental tree) had a standard rate of 10%, but just recently, in 2.0.10, it was changed to anytime we got a critical spell hit.That's huge. But it's also what the devs apparently didn't like.
PTR notes: Welcome to Ogri'la
Along with the Skettis Skyguard, there's another new faction to grind for in 2.1: Ogri'la. In my search for the elusive ogres, I was sent down to the Lower City by a quest giver in Shattrath's Terrace of Light; from there, the next step is to zip up to the Ring of Blood in Blade's Edge and talk to an ogre there. (Side note: the journey was hilarious, as epic flying mounts on the PTR are currently bugged to flutter their wings insanely fast when you fly forward.) I didn't follow through after that, because all the "real" quests to gain reputation with the Ogri'la ogres appear to be 5-man, and the thought of pugging with four other random PTRers was a little daunting.Never fear, though, I did go over to Ogri'la to snap the above shot and check out the rewards, which you can see in the picture after the cut (not composited by me; my pic was much worse). The prices of all the gear are in Apexis Crystals and Apexis Shards, which I assume drop from whatever it is you have to kill to get Ogri'la rep. If it's anything like the Sporeggar, getting the required reputation level is much more difficult than getting the turn-in tokens. Oh, and there's a repair vendor there, which is always pleasant. Ogri'la is located in the west of Blade's Edge, between Forge Camp Terror and Forge Camp Wrath.
PTR notes: new helms for Badges of Justice
G'eras, the Naaru who sells you things for Badges of Justice in Shattrath, now has eight new epic helms with meta slots in addition to his new Primal Nether trade-in. They cost 60 badges each. As you might expect, there are two helms for each type of armor, which makes it pretty easy to figure out which are for which classes. Of course, there being two cloth helms, the DPS clothies have to share one. Spec-wise, the hybrids' helms break down like this, as far as I can tell: Druid: Feral Shaman: Elemental Warrior: Protection Paladin: Holy All the helms have from 21 to 37 stamina on them too, which is nice -- I've noticed that the better gear my Priest gets, the less HP she has. All in all it looks like pretty good gear (although they need to work on meta gem itemization, but that's a separate issue). Screenshots of all the items after the cut. What do you think? Will you be shooting for one of these? (Pictured is the Rogue helm.)
PTR notes: Welcome to Skettis, Polly wanna cracker?
In every public test realm, there are those brave souls who go out and try to grind factions, kill bosses, and do long questlines for rewards that will not be transferred to their main characters. Aalhi of Kael'Thas is one of those brave souls. He's decided to head over to Skettis and start doing some of the Sha'Tari Skyguard reputation quests to see what they're like. So far, he's gotten a few quests involving killing mobs for reputation, feeding a nether ray, drinking a potion and killing named mobs, retrieving a prisoner's pack, assembling a book and turning into an arakkoa. Sounds like a pretty neat new place to quest, but the most interesting part of Aalhi's information is the reputation rewards. At exalted with Sha'Tari Skyguard, you get a nether ray flying mount (and yes, you do need 300 riding skill already. Sorry.) You can also buy two nice cloaks -- one for melee, one for casters -- that have decent stats and a use of reducing your fall speed for 10 seconds. There are some fun buyable foods at friendly reputation: one that restores 2148 health and 4410 mana and one that restores 7500 HP and gives you 30 stamina and 20 spirit for half an hour. The real prizes of Skyguard rep, according to Aalhi, are the two trinkets you can get at exalted: "Airman's Ribbon of Gallantry: Equip: Improves spell critical rating by 31 Equip: 30% chance to increase your spell damage and healing by 80 when you kill a target that gives experience or honor. This effect cannot occur more than once every 10 seconds. Skyguard Silver Cross: Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 31 Equip: 30% chance to increase your attack power by 140 when you kill a target that gives experience or honor. This effect cannot occur more than once every 10 seconds." Niiiice. What do you think? Will you be grinding Skyguard or Netherwing rep in the next patch, or trying to get to the Black Temple?
PTR notes: There's no such thing as a free Netherdrake
The announcement of a Netherdrake flying mount in the next patch was a beacon of hope to broke people like myself, who hoped we could quest for the mount while continuing to blow our hard-earned cash on epic gear and new recipes. Unfortunately, our hopes were in vain. The Netherdrake quest line apparently requires 300 riding skill to begin. Andrevv of World of Raids provides a nice guide plus screenshots of the quest line, which I'll summarize here. First, you have to swear yourself to the Netherdrake faction (which requires doing the Kindness questline for neutrality.) Then you get asked to disguise yourself as a Fel Orc and join the Illidari! Awesome! I always wanted to be Illidari. You then head out to Netherwing Ledge and get a couple of quests as an Orc. You can either gather 40 of some special ore/herb/etc. if you have a gathering profession, or pick up 40 crystals if you're not. Then you can head over to a goblin mercenary, who will give you some quests to help the Netherwing faction by sabotaging the Orcs. You can gather fel glands to poison orc peons or collect Netherwing relics from a skyway. There's no information on where the questline goes after that, but the ore/crystal/poison questlines are marked as "Daily," and Andrevv got 250 Netherwing reputation for turning in his first 40 ore. The Daily quests seem to be meant to limit the amount of grinding you can do in one day -- but since there are screenshots of PTR characters with drakes already, this may not be working as intended.
PTR notes: I, for one, welcome our brief mage overlords
Well, this is either a bug or the most PVP game-breaking thing since sliced hunter -- but apparently Polymorph no longer heals targets on the test realm. The various forum threads include some pretty hilarious mage justifications of why this should actually be a feature, most of which involve tirades against warlocks. The main problem with Polymorph not healing is that it's a long CC that's somewhat difficult to break. Without the healing, mages could just poly, frostbolt, poly, frostbolt, ad infinitum. Mages are quick to point out that locks can seduce/fear and DOT in a similar way, though, although sheep isn't subject to the same diminishing returns. There's a good chance this may be a side result of a change in mob Polymorphs, which have been shortened to 8 seconds from 20. But just in case this makes it to live, I think I'm going to be binding Cloak of Shadows and Vanish to about half of my keyboard. What do you think? Is it a bug or a buff? Should sheep heal at all?
