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WoW Archivist: A Glyphmas story
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? Professions in Warlords of Draenor feel completely different than at any other era in WoW. Creating powerful items is no longer a matter of farming, luck, or gold. Instead, we have to produce their key ingredients via garrison work orders. Leveling crafting professions is no longer about creating a bunch of useless items that we instantly vendor or disenchant, and reaching max level is now a slow burn instead of a quick grind. This is the first expansion where I haven't hit max level on all my professions within the first week or two. The profession that has changed the most is the most recent: Wrath of the Lich King's inscription, added in 2008. Even the interface changed: the glyph window was originally part of the spellbook UI, not the talent pane. Because of those changes, for a few very special weeks, inscription transformed the financial futures of countless WoW players. I was one of them. We called it Glyphmas, and it was magical.
The Light and How to Swing It: Paladin Protection glyphs
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Please send screenshots as well as any comments to my email at gregg@wow.com. We've recently looked at builds for protection and retribution, so let's continue that trend and take a look at glyphs. I'm going to review all of them, as we're getting pretty close to Cataclysm, and I'm going to also review them in a more global context instead of talking about what is going to help you on hard-mode Lich King. The way I've set it up is that everything that you're likely going to want without question has an asterisk next to it; those are pretty much things you'll want to take. If you look through the major and minor glyphs, you'll notice that there aren't very many marked as such. There's a reason for that. We just don't have that many spectacular glyphs that are useful in all situations for those types. That's not to say the other glyphs are bad (well, some are, but we'll get to that), but they're more situational and require some choice on your part.
Arcane Brilliance: Random postpatchery
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, Arcane Brilliance brings you a random collection of thoughts, impressions, half-baked ideas, and unprovoked hatred for warlocks spawned in the wake of the single most significant patch in the history of WoW. But then again ... except for the patch part, that pretty much describes every Arcane Brilliance, right? I thought I'd throw that picture of the tier 11 mage set up there to start the article because it looks so awesome. Someone in the comments section last week suggested I spend an entire column waxing poetic about how cool our tier 11 looks, and I want you to know that I gave the idea serious consideration. Could I come up with a thousand words on one set of gear? Yes, yes I could. Would it be worth reading? No, probably not. But did I want to do it anyway? Yes, yes I did. Let's leave it at this: I really, really want to put that flaming skull mask on my mage's face, and I don't care how many warlocks raid bosses I have to kill to make that happen. So now that the insanity of patch week has come and gone, how are you coping? Got your mage's specs all sorted out? Comfortable with your new spell rotation yet? Updated all your addons? Disconnected a few dozen times trying to summon the Headless Horseman? If you're still looking for a bit of help, check out last week's column on mage specs, glyphs, and spell rotations for a basic primer. This week, I figure I'd just spend the column going over a bunch of stuff I ran out of room to mention last week, along with a few new things that have occurred to me during this week's play.
Arcane Brilliance: Getting your mage up and running in 4.0.1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. Except for last week, when Arcane Brilliance was unable to sit upright, formulate a complete thought, or control the vast majority of its bodily functions. Some of you speculated that the reason I didn't write an Arcane Brilliance last week was that I was busy slaying warlocks. I regret to report that this was not the case, though the desire was certainly there. The sad fact of the matter is that I was out last week with what I believe was a case of what 14th-century Europeans called "The Plague." I woke up on Tuesday morning with a headache, which soon progressed to waves of nausea, racking coughs and severe congestion, and by Thursday, I was shambling through the streets at night in search of brains. Thankfully, I seem to have made a full recovery, though I still crave brains. I'll let you know how that goes. While I was indisposed, it seems a patch of some significance has dropped. Then we got nerfed or something? All I know is that I logged in on Tuesday night and my fire mage was doing a buttload of DPS, and then I logged in again two days later and he was doing maybe one-and-a-half cheeks' worth of a buttload. It was super fun. So, massive buffs followed by massive nerfs aside, we should probably talk a little bit about this whole patch thing. By now, I assume most of you have already respecced your mages, for better or for worse. Even still, I feel like a 4.0.1 primer is in order. Click the link below and you'll find a basic starter guide for getting your mage back on his feet after all this craziness. This week we'll cover specs, general rotations and glyphs.
The Art of War(craft): Must-have PvP talents for death knights in 4.0.1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Art of War(craft), covering battlegrounds and world PvP, and Blood Sport for arena enthusiasts. Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? Battlemaster Zach Yonzon, old-world PvP grinder and casual battleground habitué, rambles on about anything and everything PvP. So the bomb finally dropped. As expected, Patch 4.0.1 finally made it to live realms and players are scrambling to get used to everything new. For most players, that first free respec is used for PvE to enable them to join the latest PUG looking to down the week's raid boss. This is when reality bites -- that spec you've been fiddling around with over at Wowhead or wowtal.com isn't delivering the way you thought it would. That's OK. If you're doing some PvP, understand that there are a number of bugs out there, so things aren't behaving exactly as they should. Add to that the fact that the game is balanced around being level 85, that stamina is low, and resilience has taken a hit ... things are going to be somewhat wonky. So don't write off that spec you've theorycrafting on for weeks just yet. Since specs are pretty complex and fluid at this point, we'll take a look at vital PvP talents instead. The fun thing is that at this point in the game, all specs are good to go for PvP -- although your mileage may vary. There isn't much room for variation, unlike before, when players could reach deep into two trees, especially for PvP. But inevitably, there are talents that are extremely useful in a PvP environment. Today we'll take a look at core PvP talents for each spec for death knights, just in case you were wondering what to do with those last few talent points. For this exercise, we won't bother discussing any 31-point talents because, well, you're supposed to pick those up, anyway.
The Queue: Pop
Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Speaking of pop, Bejeweled 2 is free on PopCap.com today until 10 p.m. PST! Go get it! Liam asked: What is the difference between major and prime glyphs? I thought a tier of glyphs was supposed to be more fun and cosmetic now, but they seem the same to me, just changes to our spells. Prime glyphs are no-brainer DPS/effectiveness increases. Major glyphs offer new utility or changes in your rotation that are hard to "math out." Minor glyphs give fun or cosmetic changes.
Cataclysm beta: New glyphs for rogues and shaman
Blizzard's been hard at work adjusting a lot of WoW's game systems for Cataclysm, and one of the biggest changes in the pipeline is the overhaul of the inscription profession. You may remember the Path of the Titans alternate advancement system was axed in favor of making inscription, well, better. On top of other changes and a new UI, part of this task is adding a new tier of glyphs -- called prime glyphs -- on top of the already-existing tiers of major and minor. Ghostcrawler recently had this to say about the new glyph system: Ghostcrawler Prime glyphs aren't going to be exciting in a "change up your rotation" style. We want primes to be unambiguous dps (etc.) increases so we figured they might as well be easy to understand rather than something so convoluted that everyone would just go to a fansite to see which 3 to pick. The majors are more interesting, because they are either not dps increases at all, or dps increases in ways that are tricky to math out. We think players will debate and geek out more about which majors to use, and with the new glyph design, swapping them out once in awhile isn't very painful. Minors are basically convenience or fun. source Several classes have had their glyphs worked on and updated as of this beta patch, but only rogues and shaman glyph passes appear to be "done," so we've listed glyphs for those two after the break.
