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Patch 3.3.2 patch notes on official Korean WoW site
Blizzard, perhaps jumping the gun a little, has posted the patch notes for the upcoming Patch 3.3.2 mini-patch on the official Korean site. We've translated them for your convenience. Lots of changes to heroic dungeons, some class buffs (warlock, shaman, druid), and some class nerfs (prot warrior). All this and more, after the cut. Disclaimer: Translation is hard! Some of these notes, especially more complex ones, may be slightly off. We'll post the official English notes when they're posted as well. Update! Warbringer change clarified (again). Ghostcrawler chimed in about it. Dungeons and Raids Icecrown Citadel The Frostwing Halls, the last stronghold of the Lich King and the Scourge, has been added, but the Ashen Verdict must break down the door first. (Does this mean we have to wait some additional time to fight Arthas?) Halls of Stone Brann Bronzebeard has been working out, so he'll run faster during the escort event. Forge of Souls Devourer of Souls will cast Mirrored Soul less often. Trash mob Spell Reflect abilities have been changed. It now has a casting time, and will proc only twice at a rate of 75% instead of 100%.
Scattered Shots: Hunting heroics and PUGs
Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class. We all know how painful PUGs can be. The DPSer doing less damage than you could do naked; the retadins and mages that open up immediately and pull aggro on everything; the tanks that still degroup the instant you land in Oculus or can't hold aggro on anything and ignore the mob eating the healer's face off; and of course the foolish healers that don't prioritize healing your pet above all else. We talk a lot about optimizing our hunters for raids, and we're going to continue to do so. However a lot of hunters don't have raid access and are taking advantage of the new Dungeon Finder to run heroics until their feet are bloody and their gun barrels melt. So today we're going to take some time to talk about the facets of doing good heroic DPS, and about being a good heroic group member in general. So join me after the cut as we take a look at how your shot rotations change in heroics, examine mana conservation, and generally discuss how to be a good group member.
Pulling aggro in PUGs: who's to blame
There is no question that as we PUG up the Dungeon Finder system for our daily random heroic we are going to encounter a lot of bad tanks. It's not surprising really. These are people who spend all day every day getting smashed in face, typically by monstrosities many times their size. And more disturbingly, they chose to do this in the first place. So it should be no surprise that these aren't the brightest people in WoW. However, it's often far too easy for us DPSers to blame the tank for losing aggro. After all, holding aggro is their job! What is strangely easy for us to forget is that not pulling aggro is our job. It's time for DPSers to take a long hard look at just how good a player we are before yelling at the tank. Join me after the cut as we take a look at why pulling aggro is the fault of the DPS almost every single time.
WoW Insider Show Episode 123: Goodnight everybody
The WoW Insider Show podcast aired once again this Saturday, with me and my guest hosts Matthew Rossi and Colby Moore delving into reader emails and this week's top stories on WoW.com. Thrill as we answer the age-old question of "Is it worth it to skip bosses in random heroics?" Marvel as we say it's pretty okay for Blizzard to help out the police! Gasp as I forget to thank my cohosts at the end of the show and pull a Yakko Warner! Goodnight everybody. As always, you can email us at theshow@wow.com with any questions or comments -- we might even read yours live on the air. Get the podcast: [iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes. [RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator. [MP3] Download the MP3 directly. Listen here on the page:
The Dungeon Finder and gear disparity
There is some confusion as to whether/how the Dungeon Finder matches characters according to internal gear score. To the best of my knowledge, it actually attempt to create a discrepancy between characters' gear, so that you're likely to wind up with a few heavily geared members 'carrying' lesser-geared members. This is directly contrary to a claim I've seen circulating that the system attempts to match internal gear scores. If the system doesn't attempt to create disparate groups, it should, and if it does, I'm glad it does. It may be disheartening to see someone in your group in full blues or maybe even a couple greens, instead of the now-familiar suit o' purples, but as some commenters pointed out in my post on Dungeon Finder bingo, we all started out in blues and greens at 80 (with the possible exception of some crafted gear and BoEs), and heroics were designed to be run with that gear. Where are the epics supposed to come from, for a pre-raid character? Furthermore, a less-geared character might actually need some of the gear that drops in the ilvl 200 heroics (i.e. everything except CC, FoS, PoS, and HoR), which is a nice change of pace from the usual shardfest. It may take you a few extra minutes to farm your emblems, but PuGs are about more than just you: they're about a group of people coming together to help each other out, and enjoy a dungeon.
The Queue: The new standard
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky be your host today. That's a picture of my hunter above. She can use some better gear, and hopefully this weekend it'll be her turn to get decked out in tier 9. It's just so easy and fun. Plus I really like the idea of all my 80's having their tier 9 shoulders to look at on the loading screen. That's not strange, is it? Saberix asked... "Is tier 9 gear the new standard in gear? Am I going to be teased if I don't have it?"
Arcane Brilliance: Gearing up after the glorious patch 3.3
It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that loves nothing more than to gaze down upon the whole of Northrend from one of the floating chunks of stone around Dalaran and realize that at some point, a mage has probably killed every living thing down there. At least the targetable ones, anyway. And the ones you can't target? I'm sure more than one mage has certainly tried. So I'm officially nominating patch 3.3 for "best patch ever" status. Here's a short list of the highlights of this patch: Three highly challenging, fun, lore-filled 5-man instances, full of sweet loot A massive new raid, with four gated sections, 12 bosses, and the promise of eventually being able to shove a Fireball up the Lich King's tailpipe The incredible, game-changing Dungeon Finder Tool, which is responsible for peace in the Middle East, has brought an end to the recession, and has cured cancer A few choice mage buffs, including a PvE viable Frost spec Quest Tracking without the need for an addon Quel'delar and Shadowmourne A swiftly approaching new Arena Season Weekly raid quests The Kalu'ak Fishing Derby Perky the Pug A host of little changes for low level characters Rocket bare Not shabby, right? And best of all, Blizzard has managed to deploy the majority of this new content without also deploying a host of bugs, glitches, and instability, or otherwise making the game unplayable for awhile as we've come to expect from patches this large. There were some log-in issues and bugginess on day one, but by day two, everything was running relatively smoothly by day two. I'm being relatively conservative when I say that Blizzard, in my personal opinion, has hit this one out of the park.
WoW Rookie: Gearing up with the LFG feature
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. For links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's, visit WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide. Plotting your path from zero to hero? "Last night, I got my alt mage to level 80 (woop) and thought I'd set about doing some heroics to get those 'phat loots' and a have a bit of fun," writes reader Hedwinkle of EU Daggerspine. "However, I was disappointed to see that I couldn't queue up for any heroics using the new tool, as my gear level wasn't high enough. I mean, it's all blue gear from the later instances, so I guess I have two questions ... "1. What is the gear level required to allow me to queue up for random heroics using the new tool? "2. What is the best way for me to go about getting my gear level higher? People on my server have very little interest now in finding a group the 'old-fashioned' way." As it turns out, Hedwinkle's not the only one who's been puzzling over the details of how the new Looking for Group tool matches and places group members. Luckily, blue poster Zarhym had some answers that should reassure all of WoW Rookie's fresh level 80s.
Patch 3.3: Helpful rewards for low-level dungeon runs
We've been talking a lot about Patch 3.3's new Dungeon Finder feature lately, and for good reason -- it's leaps and bounds better than the LFG tool we've been dealing with for the past several years. One of the features that's caught everyone's attention is the great reward that level 80 players get for completing random WotLK Heroic dungeons. Well, if you're a lower-level player using the tool to run random dungeons at your level, it turns out you get something too. The Satchel of Helpful Goods is a level-scaling bag o' rewards, which EU Community Manager Wryxian says will contain one piece each from two sets of loot rewards. Quoth the crocolisk: ...these satchels are rewards from doing a random dungeon through the LFG tool at lower levels. There's two groups of items that can be inside them. One includes bracers, rings, necklaces and cloaks. The other has belts, boots, gloves and shoulder items. What you'll find in the satchel is one item from each group, and this is also further influenced by a ten level range. So for example, what is in a satchel received for completing a dungeon between levels 20 and 30 might be a nice necklace and some gloves, but from a dungeon between 50 and 60 you might get a ring and some new boots. The level ranges he refers to are 5-15, 15-25, 24-34, 35-45, 46-55, 56-60, 60-64, and 65-70. Wryxian indicates that the two item groups are set up so as not to trivialize quest rewards from the zones in your level range, and to make sure that you're always receiving a variety of gear. It's unknown at this time whether these'll be blues we've seen before, a la Elven Spirit Claws, or whether they're newly-created blues with the express purpose of being Satchel rewards. Still, pretty cool. Oh, and you get money too. 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 Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
The Queue: No
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. For the curious, the original title of today's edition of The Queue was "The Queue: Adam if you skip me and write a Queue today I'm going to shiv you IRL because I'm seriously not still asleep and will have it written in a couple of hours." Luckily, he didn't skip me, so he gets to live another day. Terethall asked... "Will the newer 5-mans (ToC and the Icecrown Citadel 5-mans) be included in the random dungeon tool in 3.3? Because it seems like a huge difficulty difference when you could go from extremely easy instances like Heroic CoS to extremely difficult (comparatively) Heroic instances like ToC and the IC instances."
Patch 3.3: Just run as many heroics as you want
Blizzard's new Dungeon System is a pretty huge overhaul of the social and gameplay experience of getting an instance group together, and we're all pretty excited about it here. On top of the hassle-free daily random dungeon selection and the great new matchmaking features, you even get teleported to the random dungeon. But as it turns out, there's even more cool stuff hiding below the surface. If you're like me, chances are good you've spent a day or two chain-running heroics to gear up an alt or to get instant gratification on that badge item you want. The issue with chaining heroics at this point in time is that eventually you hit a wall: do instances you hate (Oculus) or stop running instances because of your 24-hour heroic lockouts. Well, in patch 3.3, everything's a-changin'. While heroic lockouts aren't going away, they will not affect your random dungeon selections. What this means is that if you and four guildies do a timed Culling of Stratholme run, and then you join the queue for a random heroic, you may be assigned Culling of Stratholme a second -- or third, or fourth -- time, depending on your luck, as your random dungeon. And you'll get two extra Emblems of Triumph for completing the random dungeon each time, even if you've run the dungeon already that day. The only way that your lockout will affect you is that you cannot create a group with /invite for that same dungeon again that day. Basically, as long as you're choosing the Random Dungeon option, you can run as many heroics as you want, every day. With increased rewards for, easier access to, and the trivialization of lockouts for heroics, Patch 3.3 is the perfect time to dust off that neglected level 80 alt of yours and take him or her on a tour of Northrend's most dangerous places. 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.
WoW Rookie: PUGging without the bad apples
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic, and be sure to visit WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide for links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's.PUGs (PickUp Groups), which are groups of players that come together on the fly to run instance groups or raids, are a fact of life for most WoW players. Especially in today's WoW, when instances fly by more quickly than ever before (a quick TotC before dinnertime, anyone?), PUGs help you accomplish your quest, gear and achievement goals when you can't run them with a regular group or guild. And now that most players are concentrated in endgame content, PUGs are likely to be the only way you'll get a shot at running earlier instances as intended, with a group of the appropriate level.Sounds like a winner ... So why do PUGs get such a bad rap? Mostly, it's the bad apple theory – but as Donny Osmond warbled so winningly above, "one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch, girl." In a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG like WoW, you shouldn't be afraid to get involved with other players. Let's see how you can dig into PUGs without biting into (or being) the worm.
Arcane Brilliance: Making your Mage raid-worthy, part 1
Welcome to another Arcane Brilliance, the weekly Mage column that asks all the tough questions, and then Ice Blocks before the tough answers one-shot it. A little while after Wrath hit, Arcane Brilliance posted a column on how to gear your Mage up for Naxx. Several things have changed since then: Pretty much everything I wrote then is now wrong. You don't really gear for Naxx anymore. Naxx is now a place you go in order to gear up for other places. Trial of the Champion. Knowing these things, I thought an updated gearing column might be in order. So if you're raising a fledgling Mage, and level 80 is about to hit you like a truckload of Death Knights, and you're looking for the quickest way to turn green and blue into purple, look no farther. Well maybe a little farther. The column's not over yet.
BlizzCon 2009: Cataclysm dungeons
Cory Stockton and Scott Mercer gave an in-depth look into the dungeons and raids available at the launch of WoW: Cataclysm during the Raids and Dungeons panel today at BlizzCon. We'll look at the dungeons first.OVERVIEW: At launch, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will ship with eight 5-man dungeons and two heroic versions of old-world dungeons.Grim Batol: One level 85 5-man.Skywall: One level 80-82 5-man.Abyssal Maw: Two 5-mans; level 80-83 and level 82-84.Deepholm: One level 80-83 5-man.Uldum: Two 5-mans; level 83-84 and level 85.Blackrock Caverns: One level 85 5-man.Shadowfang Keep: One level 85 heroic 5-man.The Deadmines: One level 85 heroic 5-man.Descriptions and info after the jump for dungeons that were covered in depth in the panel. %Gallery-70745%
BlizzCon 2009: Blizzard announces cross-server instances
In what will certainly be the be-all end-all solution to "additional instances cannot be launched", Blizzard announced cross-server instances and LFG at the Dungeons and Raids panel at BlizzCon 2009.By taking advantage of brand-new hardware separate from your realm's instance servers, not only will you be able to find groups from pools of players in your entire battlegroup, your realm's specific instance servers will be free of the stress of mass heroic-running.On top of the convenience factor, Blizzard says that rewards will be in place for players who lead groups through instances successfully. The nature of the rewards is currently unknown but Blizzard promises more information soon. Blizzard says that the feature will be used for 5-mans only at this time. It'll be launched with 3.3, not with Cataclysm. Fantastic news! No more "additional instances" errors, a larger pool of players to choose your groups from, and rewards for good party leaders. Great news for everyone. BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!
BlizzCon 2009: Opening Ceremony Live Blog
We'll be live blogging the BlizzCon 2009 opening ceremony beginning at 11:30 a.m. PDT / 1:30 p.m. CDT / 2:30 p.m. EDT.We're now live on the floor of BlizzCon! Hit the link below to read our updates -- newest at the top of the page.%Gallery-70693%
Speeding up Trial of the Champion
Trial of the Champion, the latest dungeon, has quickly become a popular daily destination. It's no wonder why; in under half an hour, with little difficulty, you can begin outfitting your character(s) with epics of Ulduar quality!At first, I wasn't sure if I agreed with Blizzard's decision to start handing out welfare epics again. Surely we can't be that close to the next expansion, Cataclysm!Then I realized how easily I could now gear one of my alts, which was something previously impossible to me. Being a main healer, I knew I would never have the opportunity to bring an alt to a raid, so my favorites have not even hit 80 yet. Now that I know I could get them Ulduar-ready in such a short time, I have renewed interest in leveling them. I can also see why Blizzard would want to help players gear up at this point in time. In Burning Crusade, so few people got to see Sunwell and experience what the expansion was all about, that this time around, they seem to be gunning for the general raiding population to reach Arthas (Icecrown Citadel). Having accepted this acceleration in "progress," I was left with one major qualm. The introduction to Trial of the Champion, which must be endured each run, is way too long. Unbearably long. Go and make a triple-decker sandwich long. Then a few guildmates and I discovered that there is indeed a way to hasten the process.
53 Emblems per day
This is great -- it's probably more WoW playing than I could do in one day, but maybe I'll try it this weekend anyway. loztaylor has designed a heck of an instance run that rolls through thirteen Heroics and will nab you 53 Emblems of Conquest (along with all of the other spoils of war) in one day. Basically, you'll be sweeping across the land of Northrend, hitting every Heroic you come across, and if by some chance you're able to keep the group together the whole time, and keep from passing out from all the WoW playing you're doing, at the end you'll end up with 53 Emblems, more than enough to purchase most of the Emblem gear, and almost enough to pick up a Tier piece.Of course, if you're wearing a rep tabard, you'll also rein in a ton of dungeon rep. And if you hit the new Trial of the Champion, you'll pick up your Champion's Seals as well. And you'll have 13 Frozen Orbs to divvy among the group, a few extra Emblems and gold from doing the daily quests, and if you're good and/or lucky, you might even be able to clear up a few of the achievements or snag that blue proto-drake. Of course, doing this much of anything in the game will probably nab you plenty of rewards. But here's a tuned route to follow all the way around the world of Heroics. If I can find a willing group of suckers guildies, I think I'll give it a shot.
The Queue: Dragon Slave!
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Allison Robert, erroneously described by Alex Ziebart as "universally adored" on this site (whisper the phrase "I hate Tauren cat form" in Turtlehead's direction and run) is your hostess today.Mmmm...my favorite kind of Queue, the kind with a tank question. Actually, there were two good tank questions from the previous Queue, but the one asked by Gatorforest is something I'd like to address in a separate article. Additionally, two of the questions you'll see here wound up requiring fairly involved answers, so there are a few more questions I'd like to take a crack at sometime later this weekend if I get the time.And because it's Friday:Charlie asks...How many Queue columns does it take for one to finally reach the front of the line?The readers or the writers? I don't know about the former, but for us, it depends on the outcome of the previous day's in-staff gladiatorial match. Much like Mary Sues in the now-classic Pirate Monkey comic, THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE. Actually, I'm just using this as an excuse to quote the following:Professor Flitwick: Wait, she said she's both Dumbledore's and Snape's daughter. How is that possible?Dumbledore: Ehh, remember that Christmas party where we all got really drunk?
Do tanks get the most out of PuGs?
I've been leveling my Restoration Shaman through Northrend, and the closer he gets to the level cap, the more I find myself getting unnerved comparing his group experiences to those of my main, a Druid tank. This past week, for example, I've healed normal 5-mans on my Shaman, then relogged and tanked heroic 5-mans on my Druid (in some cases, the very same content my shammy just did on normal). With very few exceptions, my shammy's had a tough time of it, whereas my main has sailed through her pugs without a care in the world. Initially I chalked this up to having a lot less experience playing a Shaman, but I think it was around the time that my shammy's second Utgarde Keep PuG quit at Ingvar after wiping for 30 minutes* (no joke -- and yes, this was on normal) that I had a small epiphany; maybe the reason I've enjoyed pugs so much is that I've almost always played a character who's largely immune to their faults.
