Whirlwind
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Five more must craft neutral Hearthstone cards
It turns out that people get oddly passionate about card lists, which is honestly a pretty great sign for Hearthstone. The first list we dropped two weeks ago was met with agreement, and also a lot of 'where is this card?!', despite warnings that there would be more to come. There was also some disagreement with the Wild Pyromancer choice, but I'm hoping that Amaz and his skilled use of the fiery minion at Dreamhack Summer has opened some eyes. It's incredibly powerful with the right complements. This week we'll take a look at another five sub-epic cards no one should be without. The only ranking to the list is mana cost, so we're not saying that one's more important than another. That decision is up to you and what decks you want to play.
Warrior glyph changes in patch 5.0.4
When the new 5.0 patch flips over on Aug. 28, will you be ready with glyphs? Blizzard is recycling old glyphs instead of making new spell IDs and charring old ones. Some glyphs are staying the same, some are new, but some share IDs with old Cataclysm glyphs. Below is our list of new or changing glyphs for warriors. This is not a list of changing tooltips, just which glyphs you ought to have if you want to automatically have the new glyphs when the patch flips over. Warriors have a few brand new minor glyphs: Glyph of the Blazing Trail Glyph of Burning Anger Glyph of Crow Feast Glyph of Incite Glyphs that are changing into new majors: Intervene become Blitz Intercept becomes Bull Rush Shockwave becomes Death From Above Rapid Charge becomes Enraged Speed Heroic Throw becomes Gag Order Slam becomes Hamstring Devastate becomes Heavy Repercussions Cleaving becomes Hindering Strikes Sunder Armor becomes Hoarse Voice Revenge becomes Hold the Line Raging Blow becomes Raging Wind Death Wish becomes Recklessness Piercing Howl becomes Rude Interruption Command becomes Thunder Strike Thunder Clap becomes Unending Rage Bladestorm becomes Whirlwind Glyphs that are changing into new minors: Berserker Rage becomes Bloodcurdling Shout Demoralizing Shout becomes Gushing Wound Enduring Victory becomes Mighty Victory Battle becomes Mystic Shout It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Patch 4.1 PTR Warrior changes
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. It wouldn't be a patch without warrior changes, and patch 4.1 is nothing if it isn't a patch. What are the really big standouts from an initial overview pass of the changes? Rallying Cry is a new ability that seems to work like Last Stand for the entire party or raid. Colossus Smash now only lowers armor by 70% for 6 seconds, down from 100%. Intercept stun is reduced to 1 second. In addition, Juggernaut will no longer increase the stun duration of Charge. Whirlwind will now reduce its cooldown by 6 seconds if it strikes four or more targets. Several arms abilities have had their damage increased, from Mortal Strike (175% weapon damage) to Overpower (145% weapon damage) to the talented Improved Slam (increases slam damage by 20/40%, up from 10/20%). These are most likely intended to compensate arms for losing Colossus Smash's armor penetration, indicating that nerf was aimed at fury DPS. Finally, Improved Hamstring will now also reduce the global cooldown on Hamstring by half a second for 1 point and a full second for two. Less stunning for warriors and more snaring seems to be the order of the day.
Battlegroup changes in anticipation of complete merger
Recently, players from the Emberstorm and Whirlwind groups have been noticing that they're being grouped in the dungeon finder with each other. This isn't a bug; the matchmaking system has been changed to allow those two battlegroups to be matched into dungeons and BGs with each other as part of the overall goal to eventually merge all battlegroups across a geographical area (think Europe or North America) and allow matchmaking across all of them. CM Lylirra announced these changes and addressed some bugs to the process that are making it impossible to queue for BGs, which will hopefully be straightened out. Still, bugs aside, the first step of eventually allowing an entire region to be selected from for PvP and PvE seems really exciting to me and very positive overall. Finally, I'll get to farm all the disparate old friends I have on like 20 servers! A frabjous day, all told. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.
How not to aggro your tank with AoE
Reader UnstØppable writes in with a question I thought would benefit others: "Does the Bladestorm aggro problem ever get better? What I mean is, I've seen it countless times, the arms warrior enters the dungeon, the tank lets out a sigh (sometimes it's me), we pull the first group and everything goes fine, until he hits that Bladestorm button. That's when somehow he manages to pull aggro from every mob and their mom and makes both the healer's and the tank's lives hell or usually ends up dying within seconds." Part of the problem here is that certain classes/specs have no aggro dump or reduction ability and as a result their big DPS moves generate a lot of threat. Arms warriors, most DPS death knights (at least the blood and unholy specs I've used) and retribution paladins have limited aggro reduction at best (pallies at least have Hand of Salvation but that's a band aid at best) and while tanking threat (especially AoE tanking threat) requires ramp up time, it's very easy to hit the Divine Storm, Death and Decay, Pestilence, Whirlwind or Bladestorm buttons. (Enhancement shamans with Spirit Weapons seem to be okay, I rarely pull aggro even when I go nuts with Fire Nova.)
The Queue: Now or later
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. It's been awhile since I've done listening music for The Queue. It's a lot of fun to do, but we do it so often here on WoW.com that it's starting to get a little stale. I've started to miss doing it though, so here you go. Today's listening music is some fantastic Rhett and Link, who you probably have never heard on the radio. Which is a shame. YimmyZ asked... "Is there any lore related to Emblems/badges? Something like the people need so many badges to draw magic from to imbue items or some such?"
Breakfast Topic: What do you do when your server is down?
The players on the Emberstorm and Whirlwind battlegroups have had a rough week. A massive power outage, huge network issues and other problems have forced them away from their virtual homes to find refuge elsewhere. Some have joined the It came from the Blog guild on Zangarmarsh, where we have had two impromptu server outage parties. The picture above is from Tuesday night's shindig. Others have commented in the outage posts that they have formed level 1 raids on other servers. And of course there are other games to play. Personally, if both Zangarmarsh and my main server are down, I figure it's time to start watching what's on the DVR and knitting. What do you do when your server is down?
More server outages for Whirlwind and Emberstorm [Updated]
There are more server outages hitting this afternoon, unfortunately impacting the same realms that were down for around ten hours last night. The Seattle datacenter was hit with a nasty power outage yesterday, but we currently don't know the reasons for the current downtime. There are no blue responses yet, but my gut says there's some lingering damage that will need to be dealt with this afternoon. Then again, we might be lucky and they'll be back in ten minutes. Who knows with these things? Keep an eye on WoW.com and we'll keep you posted should we hear anything. If you're not sure if you're part of one of these battlegroups, the full list is behind the cut. Update #1: Blizzard is aware of the issue. Not much else at the moment. Update #2: Looks like most servers are coming up. Our poor friends on Quel'Dorei are still down for the count. Update #3: Maintenance on these realms not necessarily 'done' says Malkorix. Update 11:57pm: Both battlegroups went down 12 minutes ago. More as we know it. Update 12:18am: Blizzard says they are working on it and that any compensation will come after the problems have been resolved. Update 3:37am: The servers are up temporarily, but will be intermittently taken down while they continue to resolve the underlying problem.
Battlegroup outages tonight [Updated]
We are getting multiple tips that some realms are down. Blizzard says that the Whirlwind and Emberstorm battlegroups are down and that they are currently investigating the matter. We'll keep you posted should anything change. In the meantime, enter to win some real life and in-game loot. Or log on to Zangarmarsh and join the WoW.com guild so you can party with us on Wednesday night. If you are unsure what battlegroup you are in, please consult this listing. Battlegroup listings are after the break. Update 1:16am: Zarhym says the problems were due to a complete power failure. The power is back on and they are trying to bring the realms up now. The party is still raging on Zangarmarsh. Update 11:37pm: They have discovered the source of the battlegroup issues, but still no estimate for when they will be back up. We're having an impromptu party on Zangarmarsh if you would like to join us. Update 11:12pm: I was just able to login. No word yet on the down battlegroups. Update 10:56pm: An official response: they are working on it. Update 10:49pm: Many, including me, are having connection issues. There is a huge forum post on the issue, but no blue response yet.
Death to Whirlwind
Well, no, not death. But the synergy between Whirlwind and Titan's Grip is, to my mind, the reason why Titan's Grip was nerfed in the first place. The secret is in Whirlwind's tooltip. For those of you who just hate reading floaty boxes, here's the skinny: "In a whirlwind of steel you attack up to 4 enemies within 8 yards, causing weapon damage from both melee weapons to each enemy."What's the problem, you're probably thinking, or maybe you're thinking about pennies and kittens, I'm no mind reader. Plus, I'm writing this before you get a chance to read it, so while I'm composing it you're not even thinking about what I'm typing because you won't read it until later and I'm also incapable of prognosticating the future.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Lord Marrowgar abilities and achievements
Lord Marrowgar is on the PTR tonight, and he's already been downed by a number of groups and guilds. Remember, however, that this is the test realm so there's a good chance the boss is undertuned and will be a bit harder come patch 3.3. Or not, Lord Marrowgar (who has less health than someone like Lord Jaraxxus) may just end up being a 'gimme' boss to ease you into progression. Either way, don't read too much into his difficulty tonight.Even if he's not perfectly tuned yet, the testing has given us some idea of how his fight will go. His notable abilities are... Whirlwind - Just what you would expect, a physical damage AOE. When it lands, it also applies a DoT. Lord Marrowgar will announce the ability before he uses it, so your melee will want to get out of the way so they don't get hit with the bleed. Saber Lash - Seasoned raiders will know this ability well. It's an incredibly powerful melee strike that splits its damage across three targets (on 25-man, two targets on 10-man) so you'll want all of your tanks standing together. That way, nobody gets 1-shot by it. Coldflame - A line of (cold) fire spawns, and you must not stand in it. Do not stand in the fire. Seriously, people. Bone Spike Graveyard - Lord Marrowgar throws a bone spike in a chosen direction, and anybody directly in the line of fire will be impaled. The rest of the raid will need to DPS down the spike to free impaled players. It can be avoided, and it will not hit targets being hit with Saber Lash.
Emberstorm and Whirlwind battlegroups down
We're receiving reports that servers on the Whirlwind and Emberstorm battlegroups, located in the Seattle datacenter, are currently experiencing downtime. These were the same battlegroups that were scheduled to recieve their local power supply upgrade today, so there may have been some unanticipated issue in the process.Don't panic! It's likely only temporary and they should be back up soon.We'll update you guys with more info when we get it. The full list of affected realms is under the cut -- feel free to hit us up on Twitter @wowinsider if yours comes back up and we haven't reported on it yet.UPDATE 4:18 AM EDT:Blizzard has posted a thread regarding the issues on the Battlegroup forums.
Unexpected crashes and downtime hit multiple servers
A sudden wave of crashes has hit the North American WoW servers, with the Emberstorm and Whirlwind Battlegroups especially hard hit. As of this writing, most of the affected servers are still down. Blizzard is aware of the issue and is looking into it, but has no further information to give at this time. We'll update this post when we hear more.UPDATE: According to Crygil, tonight's issue was out of Blizzard's control, but luckily things have resolved themselves. All realms should be up within the next half hour.[Thanks to everyone who gave us a heads up!]
Warrior changes in PTR Patch 3.0.8: Dead parrot edition
Warriors are now the most powerful class in the game. Please delete all other characters and switch to your level 13 Warrior alt you haven't played in three years. Also, please be sure to level bandaging up quickly as 24 other warriors bandaging the main tank is all you'll need to defeat most Wrath raiding content.Okay, now that I've got that out of my system... let's take a look at the three changes they've made to the Warrior class for PTR Patch 3.0.8.First and foremost, the one you'll hear around the campfire the most – Titan's Grip has had the hit penalty removed. Completely gone. It is no more. The Titan's Grip hit penalty ceases to be. It is an ex-hit penalty!'Ello hit penalty? Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o'clock alarm call!/thumps-the-hit-penalty-on-the-counterNow that's what I call a dead hit penalty.
Tips for new Death Knights from a fellow melee, part 1
Dear reanimated angst-puppy hero corpses,Love what you've done with the smell, really. The little air freshener attached to the runeblade is a nice touch. Now that I'm in the beta, I've had the opportunity group with -- conservatively -- billions of you. I've healed a lot of Death Knight tanks, and tanked for a lot of Death Knight DPS. Most of you seem like cool people, so I say this with sincere love in my little Druid heart and a touch of worry over what will happen in November:Most of you are awful.I don't wish to be needlessly cruel here, mind you, or to overlook that the class is still new. Blizzard endlessly tinkers with you, so it's not like your rotations haven't changed, or your talents and skills are stable. And I know you're not coming to Northrend with a bank full of awesome gear from Burning Crusade. This isn't about your wearing greens or using the wrong attack or tanking rotation; I'm not even going to bother with the theorycraft surrounding the ideal DPS rotation until Wrath actually ships. But I'm seeing an awful lot of you running around playing as if...almost as if...you haven't played a tank or a melee class before. It's uncanny. But when I switched from playing a balance to a feral druid more than a year ago and knew nothing about playing a melee DPS/tank, I made all the mistakes you're making right now. Help me help you!
Ask a Beta Tester: Wyrmrest Temple and the dragon shrines
Elizabeth is off having grand adventures at the airport today, so I'll be filling in for her on Ask a Beta Tester today. You may know me from such WoW Insider features as Know Your Lore, Ask a Lore Nerd, Hybrid Theory, and Bad Pop Culture References. Hm, wait, I think I imagined that last one... Anyway! I'll be fielding your questions today, and I apologize if I didn't get to yours. I had to pick and choose questions I actually knew a thing or two about, so I couldn't really answer class questions about classes I don't play or don't know very well.If I didn't get to your question today, go ahead and ask it again today, and hopefully one of the other WoW Insider staff in the Wrath Beta will be able to answer it for you. Thanks, everyone!juicyjuice asked: As I understand it, the Argent Dawn is making a reappearance in WotLK. Will players who spent a lot of time with the Argent Dawn pre-BC have a significant advantage over people who may not have much or any Argent Dawn rep when WotLK hits? The Argent Dawn and parts of the Silver Hand are now operating as the Argent Crusade. I won't elaborate on that so we can avoid any spoilers on the front page here. So no, high Argent Dawn rep from WoW Classic will not give you any advantage in Wrath of the Lich King. However, it will probably play a role in an achievement or two, though it is a bit too early to say for sure whether that will be the case when Wrath hits retail.
Is World of Warcraft really World of Diablo?
So how do you design Diablo 3 anyway? Bargain Bin Reviews has an idea -- just retrofit World of Warcraft. Shift talent points to spells, decrease enemy health and damage and increase the number of enemies by a factor of 10 or so, do away with healing spells and tanking, and you're essentially done. It's a bit silly and a bit tongue in cheek, yes, but it also brings up a good point. In the end, WoW is probably influenced by Diablo 2 as much as it is by Warcraft 3, if not more.
Patch 2.4.2 surprised me
Not that it was happening, but rather that it added a really strange sound effect to my Bloodrage and Berserker Rage abilities. My wife described it as sounding like the mutant offspring of an orc and a murloc howling in anguish, and she's not far off. After a while I realized I recognized the sound as being the same one that plays when Horde shamans use Bloodlust. Now, I don't know why, but while I accept the sound when it comes out of an orc, I have a really hard time hearing it when my human pops bloodrage... which he does a lot, since you know, needs more rage and all. This is reminiscent of the previous patch with the unexpected change to Whirlwind (also a sound effect change) and it makes me wonder every time if I just wasn't listening or if it's an actual change. Furthermore, it always makes me stop and think about just how much development work goes on for things like new music in inns, new sound effects, a new pet model... these things all add up and it's a lot of work if you stop and think about it.Have you noticed any other changes, undocumented or just stuff you didn't really think about?
Epic weaponsmithing weapons no longer unique
MMO Champion has pointed out something that should make Warrior and Shaman weaponsmiths rather happy: all one-handed epic weaponsmithing weapons will be non-unique as of 2.4.2. Combine this with the fact that the Main Hand designation is being taken off of most weapons as well, and you can see where this is going. Dual-wielded Dragonmaws, anybody? If you can scrape together the mats, 2.4.2 should be a very good time to be a dual-wielding weaponsmith of the non-Rogue variety. The 2.7 speed on the mace and axe weapons means that your Windfury and Whirlwind will be very happy. All you have to do now is hope you have enough badges, gold, or pull with your raid leader to get all the Primal Nethers and Nether Vortexes ready to go.
Build Shop: Warrior 28/33/0
Every Tuesday, Chris Jahosky contributes Build Shop, which takes a look into one of the many talent specs available to players.This week's build comes to you courtesy of reader James (who put this together anticipating the changes to the Fury tree coming in 2.4), so today I'm going to dissect his build. Fury heavy builds are quite strong and very popular for PvE encounters through the end game (the most famous perhaps being a variant of 17/44, sometimes called a RiP (Rogue in Plate), which is desirable for the high damage output).However, this kind of hybrid build has started to see more use in other areas. While not as effective as a RiP build in PvE, these hybrid builds often pick up a weapon specialization from the Arms tree in addition to some utility talents, making them more adaptable in PvP and solo play. James' build is 28/33, and seems to be based off of the standard Fury/Weapon Spec build of 26/35. They have a good bit of variation, though -- James' focus seems to be on PvP, with talents like Iron Will and Improved Intercept, whereas the standard build focuses on damage output.After the break, I'm diving into my thoughts on the build, but make sure to share your experience and suggestions with James in the comments!
