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Spirits of Harmony may become BoE after all
Spirits of Harmony, the Mists of Pandaria currency used by many professions both for supplies and for crafting, have been BoP since the expansions launch. The last we'd heard, there were no plans to make the items BoE by the end of expansion, as with Cataclym's Chaos Orbs and Wrath's Frozen Orbs. However, a tweet exchange last week between Professions Designer @hwoome and a player suggests that the resource might not stay BoP after all ... and might even make the switch to a BoE item sooner than we'd thought. @StarkRavingCalm No harm in 6.0? I agree. Maybe even a little earlier. ;) - Hwoo (@hwoome) March 28, 2014 While it's not a confirmation by any means, the tweet came from a game designer, which suggests at the very least that the issue is not off the table for discussion as previously thought. Whether or not we'll see Spirits lose their BoP status is still up in the air, though -- so I wouldn't worry about stockpiling the items for now.
Arcane Brilliance: A look at frost PvE in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. Christian Belt is usually at the helm, but rumor has it Saruman has trapped him on the tower of Orthanc and he's awaiting rescue by a large, intelligent bird. Senior Understudy and Last Surviving Student Josh Myers has been charged with delivering the ring to the fires of Mount Doom and writing an article about mages in Mists of Pandaria. Chances are he'll only succeed at the latter. I started my mage back in The Burning Crusade with the intent of playing arcane. Arcane wasn't really a feasible leveling spec back then, though, and I ended up switching to frost around the time I hit Thousand Needles. The moment I got my first real Shattered Frostbolt off, though, I was hooked. When my mage hit 85 in Cataclysm, all I wanted to do was stay frost. Thankfully, we were into patch 4.2 by this point, and frost was moderately PvE-viable at the time. When it came time to test the beta version of frost out this week, I had high hopes. Despite my mage being fire for most of DS, frost still feels the most familiar to me, and I was able to slip back into it fairly easily. A lot of the core feeling of the spec remains unchanged, with Frostbolt, Fingers of Frosted Ice Lances, and instant Frostfire Bolts comprising much of your core rotation. There are some real noticeable changes, however, and a lot of them are for the better.
Arcane Brilliance: MoP talent calculator changes for mages, part 2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we finish what we started in our last cloumn, which will involve wild speculation, irresponsible levels of optimism, and a giddy and in all likelihood unwarranted sense of unchecked excitement about tooltips. If you missed part one, what were you thinking? We talked about the updated Mists of Pandaria talents and even made some disparaging comments about warlocks. It was super fun -- you should go check it out. But hurry up about it. Because we have new spells to discuss. Like that one up there in the picture. It's rad. Arcane spells Arcane Charge An Arcane Charge, generated by Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles, and consumed by Arcane Barrage. Stacks up to 4 times (Passive). This is a brand new spell, and it's by far the single biggest game-changer for arcane mages in the new calculator. You pick it up if you spec arcane at level 10, alongside good old Arcane Blast, and it changes how that spell works, along with every other major arcane nuke.
Frozen orbs to be greed only in patch 3.3.3
Well, this is a welcome change -- now that Frozen Orbs are going to be the new crafting tokens, exchangeable for Frost Lotus and Eternal Fire, among other things, Wryxian announced that they will be greed only in the upcoming patch. Wryxian No, you won't be able to exchange Frozen Orbs for Emblems of Frost. Yeah it just takes one person to press Need after everyone's pressed Greed on the Frozen Orbs and you miss out. But the good news is that in patch 3.3.3 this won't be the case anymore -- the roll for Frozen Orbs will be an automatic Greed roll. Rejoice! source I wonder whether this is now some sort of flag in their database that they could use for other items. Like Books of Glyph Mastery. Nothing is more annoying than someone ninja looting jerk looting something that everyone gains equal benefit from. Edit: Ninjas are cool. People who steal from their peers are not. Stop calling them ninjas. Patch 3.3.3 brings about small but noteworthy changes to the World of Warcraft. From a faster CoT, to putting those old Frozen Orbs to better use, to changes to the auction house -- there's several things all WoW players need to know. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3.3 will keep you up to date!
Frozen Orbituary: The Death of Rolling 'Greed'
Frozen Orbs matter again. Come Patch 3.3.3, Frozo will be exchanging your frozen orbs for crafting materials used in some of the better Pre-ICC craftables. It is prudent, then, in my mind, to inform the greater playerbase at large about this development. Most people know about the new value of frozen orbs. If you read WoW.com, you've already been exposed to some pretty comprehensive coverage. This post is to address a growing trend I personally see in random heroics -- rolling need on the orbs ahead of the patch. No one should fault people for rolling need on frozen orbs at this point in the game. They have new value. Technically, we all can use them. Frozen orbs are directly convertable into some better cash items. While the items you can buy currently with frozen orbs on the PTR are not set in stone, and their costs are subject to change, we know that they will be useful. Two different solutions to the frozen orb situation present themselves: 1) Blizzard removes the need roll from frozen orbs so everyone gets a chance to get the orb or 2) change the behavior of the populace and everyone roll need on frozen orbs and educate the masses on the new, impending value of frozen orbs. If you've ever been upset at a random pick up group player rolling need on a frozen orb, you have a weapon to fight it -- just roll need, and tell everyone else to roll need as well. Do everyone a favor and educate -- let people know frozen orbs will have a new place in the economy. Now you've got a random chance for frozen orbs and of avoiding the end of instance standoff.
Insider Trader: Patch 3.3.3 changes for professionals
Matt's covered the basic profession changes in patch 3.3.3, but I wanted to spend some more time with those changes. At face value, they may not seem like a very big deal. However, the ramifications of the changes run a little deeper than many people would necessarily realize. The changes affect a lot about the way we habitually perform our trades, and will definitely affect how we sell items in trade chat and on the auction house. The most startling change for professions in patch 3.3.3 is probably the new NPC. Frozo the Reknowned takes your Frozen Orbs and turns them into more useful materials. (There was a time I thought I'd never get enough Orbs, but I guess times change.) Let's take a look behind the jump and do a little more trade-based analysis of these patch 3.3.3 changes, and what it means to the future of professions in Wrath of the Lich King. While it seems that the changes will make a great deal more convenient in the new patch, it does seem like the auction house prices for items are likely to go down.
Patch 3.3.3 PTR: Frozo the Renowned takes your Frozen Orbs
Frozen Orbs have been sort of a weird little problem since Patch 3.3 came out. Since they automatically drop off every heroic end boss, the dungeon finder has pretty much guaranteed that there's thousands of them created every single day. However, the Emblems of Triumph that come out of those same dungeons pretty much make most of the profession gear made with Frozen Orbs obsolete. As a result, many of us have at least a couple stacks rotting in our banks or backpacks, and I know I personally have started outright passing on them, having nothing better to do with them. Now I sort of wish I hadn't, if only because they're finally useful as currency in Patch 3.3.3.
Patch 3.3.3 PTR: User interface updates
Blizzard has added some major and minor improvements for the user interface in their minor content patch of 3.3.3. Some of these include the addition of a random battleground finder, a holiday boss random dungeon group, as well as others. It is still early in the patch process, so some of these things may undergo more changes as it works its way along. There are still a few rough edges on the interface for the moment. We don't have everything that's been changed thus far in the gallery, but we thought we'd give you as much as we could muster on short notice. Plus, we included the new Frozen Orb vendor in the gallery for you to drool at things you can do with all of those spare orbs from your daily rampaging of Northrend instances. Keep an eye on WoW.com for more updates on what patch 3.3.3 is bringing to you. %Gallery-86064%
Patch 3.3 PTR: Arctic Fur is less annoying, vendor purchased
Here's a nice little find from official forums poster Whut of Cenarion Circle: Arctic Furs, those impossibly hard to farm rare skinning drops that are needed for everything from Leg Armor to Motorcycles, will be a lot easier to get in Patch 3.3. Namely, Braeg Stoutbeard, the recipe vendor outside of Legendary Leathers in Dalaran, is selling them for the low price of 10 Heavy Borean Leather on the PTR. If you've been farming and selling Arctic Furs, I suppose you might be a bit bummed that your cash cow is going away, but for the most part I think most of us are pretty happy with it. For example, if you're like yours truly, you have a stack of 20 Frozen Orbs sitting in the bank just begging to be made into something useful if you could just skin more than 1 Arctic fur every couple months. Then again, at 60 total Borean Leathers before you can actually buy one, you'll still have to put in some overtime with the skinning knife.Overall, though, this is one more nice little thing for professionals (and any tanks or physical DPS upgrading to tier 9 or tier 10 legs) to get excited about in Patch 3.3.Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
The Queue: Ziebart vs Sacco
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.Sometimes late at night when the sun is down and the moon is up, the writers at WoW Insider sit around the campfire and talk about things. Weird things. Like owning a pet snake and cat at the same time (Sacco), or how putting together a desk can be a pain (Alex). More and more often these days there has been a little friendly feud going on between Alex and Sacco. You can read their little quips at each other over a few posts. So today in the Queue I want to ask you: who would win in a writer cage match? Alex Ziebart or Mike Sacco? %Poll-27017% Also, I'd like to thank all of you who left questions not about the crazy delicious Hawaiian Pizza yesterday. You gave me something to work with!Blinger asked..."Will the emblems of Heroism be really useless now? If there is no more badge gear I need, have plenty of Frozen Orbs I can throw a stick at, is there going to be any point in me ever doing the current Wrath heroics again other than just to help out mates all of which are in the same boat anyway? Or will it be likely that there will be some form of Heroism to Valor exchange?"
Breakfast Topic: Unintended ownage
I was pretty lazy about heroic achievements at first. Too many people needed frozen orbs for their resist sets, or badges for gear, and the general consensus in most groups (whether they were pugged or guild runs) was that achievements would be great to have, but not really worth going out of our way to get at the time. Why spend 3 miserable hours trying to get Watch Him Die, we reasoned as fresh 80's, when we could finish Azjol-Nerub and do 2 or 3 other heroics in the same time period?With better gear, some free time on our hands, and the siren call of a cherry-red drake, heroic achievements became less an afterthought and more an interesting challenge. The odyssey's been an education on the limits of the otherwise admirable mantra "Bring the player, not the class" (does said player bring Bloodlust?), how much DPS you can squeeze out of your tanks and healers ("Smite harder!"), and the welcome role that luck often plays. I am ashamed to admit that Less-rabi, one of the most difficult and frustrating hurdles of Glory of the Hero, was accomplished because yours truly can't tell the difference between her Maul and Bash hotkeys in the heat of the moment. Accidentally interrupting a 0.4-second cast ability within a tenth of a second is going to go down as one of the great Fortunate Fool moments of my tanking career. My friends, if you're working on heroic or raiding achievements, whether casually or seriously, I wish you that kind of dumb luck.
Scattered Shots: A PvE gem and enchant guide for Hunters
Welcome to this week's edition of Scattered Shots, which is dedicated to shiny things and dust.So by now you've seen our normal dungeon gear guide, our heroic dungeon gear guide, our reputation gear guide, and our holiday gift guide. Between all of them, you should be able to put together a nice solid set of gear that should let you tackle 10-man Naxxramas pretty easily. But grabbing the gear is the easy part. To go the extra mile, you need to grab those gems and enchantments. Let's look at some of the best gems and enchantments you can take along to secure your place in the DPS charts in Naxxramas.
