Ask A Beta Tester: Spirit, AoE, and raid loot part 2

Azzeron asks...

I'm not sure if this has been asked already, but, I've heard rumors that the 10- and 25-man bosses of an instance have the same loot tables. And that the only difference from killing a boss in the 10-man version as opposed to the 25-man version, is that they drop different amounts of loot (2 epics for 25-man, 1 epic for 10). Is this true?

Nope! While 10-man and 25-man raids will now cover roughly the same content, the loot tables are almost entirely different. As an example, Heroes' Cryptstalker Spaulders are the Hunter tier 7 shoulders from Loatheb in the 10-man version of Naxxramas, whereas the Valorous Cryptstalker Spaulders are the heroic version. Off-set loot is the same deal. You'll get Staff of the Plaguehound off Kel'thuzad in 10-man Naxx, but you'll never see Journey's End unless your guild can beat him in the 25-man version.

Chris asks...

So is tailoring still a "must" for shadow priests? With the change to "+spellpower", is there anything THAT worthwhile that is tailor-specific?

I'm somewhat hesitant about calling this right now. We spoke to a few tailors in the beta some time back for another question about Tailoring specialization, and people were pretty ambivalent over the current high-end recipes, which were generally inferior to drops in Naxx-10. Whether Blizzard is going to patch more and better recipes into the game is anyone's guess, although if BC is any indication we will be seeing a slew of new things.

Turtlehead is right, though; there's currently no 80-level equivalent to Frozen Shadoweave. You can make the argument that Frozen Shadowweave was a good example of what made Tailoring both irritating (to casters who really didn't want to pick it up) and lopsidedly overpowered in BC (FSW boots were better for shadow Priests than anything in the game until Tier 6 boots off Felmyst) and that this is more of a belated fix than a mistake on Blizzard's part. But you may want to wait before you drop Tailoring entirely. You get a Tailoring-specific BoP mount, you still get pretty lucrative items that are now BoE, Tailoring-specific enchants, and -- well, I'd just be careful before dropping it. Blizzard wants professions to be more about fun and less about grinding to get the best items. To be frank, it's a perspective to which I'm sympathetic.

Kildon asks...

Are you aware of any talk of a graphic overhaul of the classic game?

There's certainly been talk and Blizzard's floated the idea before, but nothing concrete at the moment.

Azshizzle asks...

Will we have different hotbar(s) when we switch to an another spec with the dual-spec system?

Dual-specs hadn't been implemented when the beta went /gack -- we're going to see them in a patch after Wrath goes live -- but something like that, yes. With dual specs you should have hotbars and glyphs unique to each spec. This solves what would have been a huge problem for hybrids especially.

Arlendor

asks...

So what speed do these 'ghostly gryphons' fly at? Is it dependant on your level of flying skill?

Epic flier speed, or somewhat faster (I couldn't really tell). I managed to die in (I think) the Cathedral of Darkness in Icecrown while taking a few snapshots of a bugged Arthas in an amusing pose. I couldn't hit him, but decided to see if his adds around the room were attackable. Yes. Yes, they were. Approximately one second later I found myself aboard a ghost-gryphon from the center of the map in Icerown (Ymirhem) and able to fly around everywhere. Lots of fun, actually. I'll have to try this "death" thing more often.

Kar on E asks...

Do I need to level my Mining to 375 before mining in Northrend or are the nodes available at 350?

You can mine and skill up on Cobalt nodes at 350 in Northrend, but for everything else you'll need to be 375+.