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Totem Talk: Enhancement's path to victory in patch 4.0.1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shamans. Rich Maloy lives and breathes enhancement -- his main spec is enhance, his off-spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance, and leads the guild Big Crits (Season 2 Ep 03 now out!)as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. Are you ready? Charge up your Maelstrom Weapons and dust off your Searing Totems -- Patch 4.0.1 is nearly upon us! Not sure what to do on your enhancement shaman? The quick-hit guide to enhancement in the cataclysmic world is below. What's not changing Let's start with some things that are not changing. Slow/slow is the way to go (for your weapons, I mean). Your weapons shouldn't be faster than 2.00 and ideally should be between 2.50 to 2.70 speed. Be wary of any weapon with a speed below 2.00; most likely it's been touched by a rogue and still has some residual poison on it meant to cripple your Windfuries and Flametongues. We're also staying with the same imbues: Windfury on the main hand and Flametongue on the off hand. With this patch (as with every patch, it seems), there was a little bit of banter about going full spellpower, with fast/fast and a caster weapon main hand along with FT/FT, reforging spirit, and otherwise doing crazy things like looking for the next Torch of Holy Fire. Don't do it. Stay slow/slow, with WF/FT. We're meant to be melee doing primarily melee damage.
Spiritual Guidance: The shadow priest's guide to World of Warcraft patch 4.0.1
Welcome to Wednesday's shadow priest edition of Spiritual Guidance, hosted by Fox Van Allen. We bloggers are all about search engine optimization. As such, there are going to be some changes around here: Shadowfiends will be referred to as "Lady Gaga meat dresses," and Dawn Moore will be henceforth referred to as "NY Jets reporter Inez Sainz." Fox Van Allen will, of course, remain Fox Van Allen -- he's as optimized as he's ever going to get. I spent hours riding a seahorse in Vashj'ir last night. I love a good video game cliché, and there's no video game cliché quite like the underwater level. The environment is beautiful and immersive, but those beautiful aqua blues and sea greens couldn't distract me from a fundamental truth about the new expansion that I was constantly experiencing: Shadow priesting is a lot more fun in Cataclysm. Period. There are more options. More abilities. And yes, even more DPS. For those of you who want to get the ball rolling on these new abilities in Cataclysm, there's good news: Patch 4.0.1 is currently available for testing on the public test realm. It's not the full release of the game, but the new patch will cover almost all the changes that are going to be made to our spec for the new expansion. And better yet, the patch's appearance on the PTR signals that all these changes to the shadow priesting way of life are just around the corner. (And not, like, how we keep saying Cataclysm is around the corner, despite its being months away. I mean legit around the corner. For reals, no take-backs.) The way you play the game, whether it's soloing mobs or raiding Icecrown, is about to change significantly. Are you ready? Follow me after the break, where I'll explain what patch 4.0.1 is, what it is not and what to do once it hits.
Gameplanet interviews Cory Stockton and Greg Street
In the flood of Cataclysm news that went live recently, Gameplanet got the chance to sit down with WoW's Lead Content Designer and Lead Systems Designer (you'll know them better as Cory Stockton and Greg Street, a.k.a. Ghostcrawler) and discussed a number of subjects likely to be affected by the expansion. Both interviews are great, and I've highlighted a few points past the cut if you're trying to avoid spoilers (in which case I must respectfully question your choice of website reading material).
Officers' Quarters: Reforging loot systems
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available this spring from No Starch Press. In the spirit of last week's column about various loot issues, I decided to feature the following email today. It comes from a guild leader who is worried about the stat changes in Wrath and Cataclysm and how they might affect his guild's loot system. Is it time to ditch the dice? I'm GM of a guild that has had a member pose a question about the way we do loot in raids. We are not a "hardcore" raiding guild though we do have around 2-4 scheduled raids per week both 10 man and 25 man. Our loot system was set up to try to be fair to and distribute gear throughout our members to help the entire guild grow and progress. We roll on gear and each member is allowed one main spec win, one off spec, and one tier piece per run. If you have won you are still allowed to roll on a piece that fits your character, but it someone rolls on it that hasn't won you will automatically lose to the person that hasn't won in that specific category. If all people have won something already it's just a high roll wins scenario. We also have guidelines concerning which type of gear is most suited to a particular niche of character; i.e. tanks, healers, dps, etc. The system has worked for pretty well so far, but this one member brought up a valid point concerning leather and cloth healer gear in the future.
Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for resto shaman
Cataclysm is right around the corner, and with it comes sweeping change for every class whether it is talents or itemization. Restoration shaman are no exception to the rule and several of the changes will affect us and how we choose gear. Take some time to read through all the stat and system changes happening, but for right now lets talk about how this affects restoration shaman. Here's the list of things we need to be aware of: MP/5: Gone Spirit: Now the regen stat of choice for all healers, gear with spirit is specifically healer gear. Spell Power: Gone from all items except for weapons, marking specific weapons as caster items. Intellect : Spell power is now derived from intellect, making this stat very important Haste: Still around. Critical Strike Rating: Still around. Spell Ranks: Gone, Spells will now grow with you as you level. Levels at which you can learn spells will be changing. Mastery: This is a specialization stat found on gear. Mastery allows for you to be better at your defined role Existing gear: Your existing gear will be updated to fall in line with these changes before Cataclysm is released What does this mean for us exactly? More about that after the break.
The Light and How to Swing It: Cataclysmadin
Every now and again, Zach takes you through musings of truth, justice, and the Azerothian way in The Light and How to Swing It before the new guy -- someone who'll actually write regularly -- steps in.Holy cow. You'll be hearing that lame phrase a lot once the next expansion rolls around and Taurens start dispensing their own brand of divine -- or should I say, bovine -- justice. All jokes aside, Tauren Paladins are just one of the big changes for class once the Cataclysm hits, and it's a pretty cool one. Blizzard seems to have planted the seeds of lore to explain the rise of "Sunwalkers", the flavor name for Tauren Paladins. Character-wise, Taurens are the most sensible choice, as well, considering they are arguably the Horde's noblest race. Undead Paladins aren't in the cards, unfortunately, even though it's something some fans have toyed around with because of lore reasons.But no, the whole "risen from the dead to wear plate" role has been filled up nicely by Death Knights. Instead, we've got the Sunwalkers, which is pretty cool for Horde players who've always wanted to try out the Paladin class but perhaps didn't want to play Blood Elves. Worgen and Goblins, Cataclysm's new races, aren't eligible to become Paladins, which rules out experiencing the new starting areas as champions of the Light. The good news is that Azeroth will be reshaped -- good news for us players, anyway... seems like a bad deal for Azeroth -- which means that we're likely to get new starting areas to experience the thrill of leveling once again.
Spiritual Guidance: What the future holds for Priests
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a UI and addons blog for WoW. What will Cataclysm hold for Priests? I'm back from Blizzcon! There's been a ton of big announcements which will mean future impacts for Priests whether you heal or dish out damage. Let's take a quick look at what we know.
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BlizzCon 2009 Insider Trader: Cataclysmic professions
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Over the course of several BlizzCon panels, we've been treated to a preview of how professions will be changing in Cataclysm, the next expansion pack. Pass through the break to learn all about: The new title and level cap. Revamped skill gains. Archaeology, the new profession! Reforging, a new dimension to crafting professions. Hints about the future of Engineering, Fishing, and Gathering. Information about things we wanted to see, but won't.
