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Lichborne: Death knight class achievements
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. Like just about every Blizzard fanboy these days, I have been playing a lot of Diablo III. And while playing it, I have indeed been looking to complete achievements whenever I can. A lot of Diablo achievements are similar to WoW achievements, but one category Diablo III has that WoW doesn't is class achievements. This is understandable. There are a lot of reasons WoW doesn't have class achievements. It's harder to level multiple characters and get them all. It's harder to implement flashy achievements that could force you to put a group at a disadvantage. People could focus on gaining achievement points rather than winning a battle. That said, I still think there's some merit to the idea. One of the best reasons to have class achievements, I think, is as a possible teaching tool. There's still not a really solid, in-game way of teaching you how to play your class, but a few achievements that rewarded you for using certain skills in certain ways might just be a good start. Sure, you could just cheese them anyway, but if you tried to get them legitimately, you could very well find yourself learning how to play along the way. This week, we'll brainstorm a few death knight achievements and see how they could help a lot of people play the class better.
Zarhym: Soulstone combat resurrections in the works
Hot on the tails of the recent death knight Raise Ally combat rez change on the patch 4.1 PTR, Blizzard's Zarhym has confirmed another (hopeful) change: at some point in the future, warlock Soulstones will be usable in combat to rez fallen members. This has led to some grumbling among the general forum posters that Blizzard's looking to make raiding too easy or classes too homogenous. Zarhym answered back that combat rez is already something that's easily obtainable from the druid class and is, in fact, expected by most raid groups. Since combat rezzes appear to be considered mandatory by many raid groups, says Zarhym, Blizzard wanted to make the ability available to more classes. Certainly, this would fit with the modus operandi it's long had of granting abilities to multiple classes to allow for more flexibility in raid makeup. Zarhym also answered concerns that spreading battle rezzes would contribute to class homogeneity by noting that he's never felt like his warlock plays exactly like a druid, and giving warlocks a combat resurrection shouldn't change that. In fact, one of the reasons Blizzard gave battle rez to some non-healer classes was to avoid the threat of class homogeny. While Zarhym says Blizzard hopes to have the change in for patch 4.1, it is still trying to get the code straightened out. Regardless, it looks it's only a matter of time now. As soon as Blizzard works out the kinks, we can expect to see yet another class with the ability to give raids one more chance to down the boss. WoW Patch 4.1 is on the PTR and WoW Insider has all the latest news for you. From previews of the revamped Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub to new Valor point mechanics to the new Archaeology items.
WoW Rookie: The method in the madness of resurrection
New around here? See all our collected tips, tricks and how-to's for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. It ain't over 'til it's over -- and in World of Warcraft, it ain't over 'til every player has used the last resurrection cooldown and trick. Death is far from permanent in Azeroth, and over time, the available methods of resurrection ("rezzing") have multiplied. Some classes can resurrect only outside of combat; one class can rez even in the heat of battle. Some classes have rezzes that work only on themselves. Now that the dungeon finder makes running instance groups so easy for a leveling player, it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with all the alternatives for coming back to life. There's a specific etiquette that's risen up around rezzes, as well, so take note and don't get caught looking like a chump.
Patch 3.3 PTR: WoW moves towards shorter cooldowns
If you checked the most recent Patch 3.3 PTR patch notes, a comparison of spells would show that Blizzard has reduced a lot of spells' cooldowns by a notable amount. This makes a significant impact on the playing environment on numerous levels, as most of these spells on long cooldowns were long considered to be powerful abilities whose use were once thought situational. These shorter cooldowns will see more abilities in play, figuring more into dungeons, questing, or world PvP. Most of these abilities still won't see action in Arenas, where the allowable spells have been limited to abilities with cooldowns below ten minutes (down from fifteen). The change appears to be a direct result of many spell cooldowns being reduced. This continues a trend in shortened cooldowns, reflecting what Ghostcrawler said in one thread about how Blizzard "in general (has) been moving away from long cooldowns, anyway." Players saw this when the iconic long-cooldown ability Lay on Hands -- an inevitable Patch 3.3 candidate for a nerf -- became usable every 20 minutes from a formerly mind-numbing one hour. More abilities are now being adjusted to be usable more often and, when necessary, balanced accordingly. Check out the full list after the jump.
Lichborne: Death knight leveling 68-80
Welcome to Lichborne, WoW.com's column for all things deathly, knightly, and death knightly. So, death knight. You're through with Outland. You just dinged 68 in Nagrand and want to move on to whiter, snow covered pastures. Maybe those pastures are in Northrend. Maybe those pastures are in Alterac Valley. Either way, let's discuss getting through those final levels and pushing you through to the end game.
World of Warcraft PTR 3.0.8 Patch notes
While the PTR isn't up and active yet, we're very likely to see it within the next couple of days given the information that Ghostcrawler has been handing out lately, or even later today. The full patch notes have seemingly already leaked, so we have them for you here as well. It seems that we're getting patch 3.0.8, not 3.0.4 like we've all been saying. Not a big deal in the end, but interesting nonetheless.Reading through these notes, keep in mind that they're probably not complete and we'll see updates to them when the PTR itself goes live. The test realm always has quite a few undocumented changes as well to keep an eye out for. Again, when we know more, we'll let you know.Edit: Updated to reflect the official patch notes.
