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Totem Talk: The problem with tier 3 talents for Mists resto shaman
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore podcast), shows you how. I'm sure that you've been busy preparing for Mists of Pandaria, logging into the beta and testing things out for yourself. Maybe you haven't gotten into the beta yet but have been testing things out on the PTR. Either way, with the announcement of the release date for Mists, things have been kicking into high gear. More beta invites are going out, and now more than ever, player feedback is incredibly important. Over the last two weeks, I've been thinking about a recent change restoration shaman have had to their level 45, or tier 3, talents. I've had a few discussions about it on Twitter with fellow shaman in the community, and after much deliberation, I've decided that it would in fact be the major topic for this week's article.
Mists of Pandaria Beta: Grand Expedition Yak price doubles to 120,000g
WoW Insider has received a tip that in the latest beta patch, the Grand Expedition Yak (the new MoP mount with a portable reforger) has had a substantial, above-inflation price hike. Its price has gone from "Blimey, that's a bit steep" at 60,000 gold to "How much?! That's insane!" at 120,000 gold. My 85 mage took the screenshot in the header, but I took my 85 shaman up to the Grummle Bazaar to re-check the price and found it to be 108,000 gold rather than 120,000. I'm assuming this is because of reputation discounts; my opinion reinforced by how Uncle Bigpocket referred to my shaman as a "friend of the Grummles." A Battle.net forum thread indicates the same, saying that the price can come down to a far more reasonable (ahem) 96,000 gold. I can only imagine that this price increase is in response to the decision to make all but PvP reward mounts account-wide, including the jewelcrafting mounts and the Grand Expedition Yak itself. I'm not sure whether this is good news or bad overall. The gold sink of the jewelcrafting mounts was certainly compromised by rendering them account-wide, so perhaps the Grand Expedition Yak was upgraded to gold sink status. However, what with this mount being so much more than a vanity choice, the punitive price seems prohibitive to its principal market: raiders. Sure, the Basil Berntsens of this world will consider 120,000 gold small change, but for most of us common folk, that is more gold than we're likely to have our greasy paws on at any one time. I can see a few people irritably scrubbing out "earn 60,000 gold to buy yak" from their Cataclysm bucket lists! Does the price increase mean you are ruling out this mammoth as part of your mountable menagerie? Or is 120,000 gold well within your reach? [Thanks for the tip, Tesliana!] 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!
Improved digsites in Mists of Pandaria archaeology
When I hit the new skill cap in archaeology on beta and achieved Zen Master, someone in my beta guild remarked that 600 skill points in archaeology sounded painful. But it's not -- it's actually better! Archaeology got some buffs in Mists of Pandaria. There are only two new races to worry about, the pandaren and the mogu, and you get nothing but these two on the continent of Pandaria. As usual, players get four random digsites across the entire continent, though it's currently bugging out to three or even two sites only. But Pandaria is so huge, you say. We're restricted to no flying until 90. How can it not be painful?
Demonic Gateway teleports party members without a Dial-Home Device
Demonic Gateway is one of the many new abilities for warlocks in Mists of Pandaria. With the beta level cap rising to level 88, making Demonic Gateway learnable, we can now see how fantastic the portals are. This pair of fel stargates works with party members. The first portal (purple) sits where you are standing, and the other end (green) is directed to anywhere with a small target circle. Demonic Gateway has both a minimum range of 20 yards and a maximum range of 70 yards. Once you've selected a spot to spawn the portal, the finishing cast animation looks like Glyph of Shadow Bolt plus Glyph of Verdant Spheres. Around each portal in its respective green or purple color will be up to five fiery orbs. These represent the number of charges the Gateway currently has, and it recharges one every 15 seconds that it's not being used, starting at zero charges on the summon. To travel, simply walk through the opening and fly to the other side in a fel green or purple ball. 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!
Warlock green fire spells spotted in MoP beta files
Green fire is coming, again! Maybe. Side effects of speculation may vary. Not only has the Codex shown up in recent datamining, but curiously also warlock spells with green fire as icons. Conflagrate, Fel Hellfire, Rain of Chaos, and Fel Immolate all have minimal descriptions and could very well be just creature or boss spells. But Fel Incinerate gives me hope, for it has not only the range and cast time, but the base mana that the real warlock Incinerate does. What boss would need to know the base mana cost, hmm? After the original flurry of excitement, Wryxian noted in the subsequent denial of green fire implementation that the devs wanted green fire "to be an epic accomplishment" for players. With the beta appearance of The Legacy of the Masters (Part 1), players are speculating among other things about a Quel'Delar-like quest line again. In the end, nothing might happen and green fire will stay unfulfilled on our warlock wish lists. But I for one haven't been so excited since I got my Dreadsteed the old way. 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!
Blood Pact: Affliction struggles to burn soulfully on beta
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill finds DoTs no longer crash her client, so she sets about corrupting every soul she can find. Unfortunately, she finds her Abyssal Bag empty, and with frustration wishes that shards could be as plentiful as before. The Soulburn system of Cataclysm was a big bust for affliction, offering plenty of utility but lacking in role-buffing damage abilities. The biggest issue was that Soulburn didn't feel like a real resource. Soulburn largely felt like a complicated set of "oh, crap!" buttons. In Mists of Pandaria, demonology and destruction are each departing from soul shards to gain new secondary resources. Soul shards will be affliction-only, so it's finally time to tailor shards to affliction purposes. Unfortunately, beta is where many things are broken or unfinished, including soul shards.
Is the beta spellbook layout an improvement?
When I first log in with the default UI, I always enable all four extra action bars on my screen. I then drag every possible spell I can onto my bars. I figure out what's important later as I beat up various quest mobs, reading tooltips mid-cast and dragging abilities around mid-fight. I suppose I'm just too excited (or impatient) to sit with the spellbook for five minutes. Yet I still noticed the spellbook changes in the beta. My racials, guild perks, and flying licenses were jumbled up in the same tab as my spell passives, talented abilities, and regular abilities. Without even a search box up, I had to flip through all the tabs multiple times to make sure I hadn't missed anything. Ghostcrawler posted two weeks ago about the pros and cons of the new beta spellbook design. I don't quite know what four to five tabs he's talking about -- to me, everything appears to be one big mess in the same tab.
Blood Pact: 4 thoughts on destruction in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill finally dives into beta and found that she was having more fun flinging fire than draining souls. I got into the beta a week ago (and with the last Annual Pass wave, a lot of the rest of you should be, too). So I went marching around Jade Forest and found myself continuously crashing to affliction spells triggering a fun little error. I'd heard things about moonkin and fire mages also having troubles, primarily when DoTs or debuffs were being cast. But errors are odd things, and I found I could cast Immolate all day long on my destruction spec. So I did destro for a day of questing and flinging fire at the training dummy. Here are a few of the first thoughts I had.
Mists of Pandaria Beta: Scarlet Monastery revamp
While the level 90 heroic versions aren't available on the beta servers yet, MMO-Champion and Wowhead both took a look into the lower level version of Scarlet Monastery to see all the revamps. The current four wings of Scarlet Monastery have been slimmed down into two wings, the Scarlet Cathedral and the Scarlet Halls, removing most of the unnecessary trash while keeping what made the monastery a great set of dungeons to begin with. Scarlet Cathedral now starts with the graveyard. Interrogator Vishas is no longer there; it's just Bloodmage Thalnos, now outside the mausoleum. Before Thalnos among the mobs are Scarlet Flamethrowers, who drop explosive cannisters that players can use to damage other mobs.
Mists of Pandaria beta opt-in and official FAQ
It's 10 p.m. Pacific, and the fine folks have a little surprise for us all of a sudden: the Mists of Pandaria opt-in and FAQ has just been posted on the official Battle.net blog. While there are over a million Annual Pass subscribers eagerly awaiting their chance to get into the beta, the developers may still need a more diverse spread of testers throughout the beta. To opt in, you will need a Battle.net account with at least one Blizzard game attached to it -- I'm sure everyone reading this has one of those, right? You can read the full FAQ on Battle.net or behind the cut below. This FAQ does detail how and when Annual Pass holders will be entering the beta, so those of you who have signed up for that should take a look.
