lk
Latest
Furor buffed for 3.0.2
Do you guys remember yesterday, when I wrote about how the Druid talent Furor was altered to prevent powershifting? Well, if not, that's OK. Furor has just been rewritten again, and this time it has all I asked for and then some. The new Furor reads as follows (with 5/5 talent points in it): Gives you 100% chance to gain 10 Rage when you shapeshift into Bear and Dire Bear Form, and you keep up to 100 of your Energy when you shapeshift into Cat Form, and increases your total Intellect while in Moonkin form by 10%. Holy sweet monkeys, Druid fans. Not only is there now no penalty whatsoever for switching in and out of cat form, we get some added Moonkin utility for this already excellent talent. This is one of those days where I just want to hug the devs, all of them. In case anyone is unclear about how this latest iteration of Furor works, here's a quick rundown (as I understand it). The game will now track your energy regeneration even when not in cat form, like it tracks your mana regen in feral forms now. When you shift back into cat, you'll have whatever amount of energy you would have had if you had just stayed in cat in the first place. Shift out to heal at 80 energy? You'll have 100 when you pop back in, 2 seconds later. Arrive at your destination and switch from flight into cat form? 100 energy to go mangle some faces. Powershifting is still out, but this is way better for the soloing Druid, not to mention the Moonkin perks. There is some concern that this may be overpowered in PvP: what's to stop you from DPSing in cat till you're at 0 energy, then shifting to bear for 10 seconds to DPS that way, then back to cat? Well, nothing, as far as I know. However, keep in mind that this is still beta, and if ferals end up hideously overpowered in arenas, I'm sure they'll make changes as necessary.
Raid buffs overhauled for 3.0.2
Blizzard has been promising changes to raid buffs and raid stacking for a little while. Last night, they laid all their cards on the table in a giant blue post. Here's a run-down; all of this will be going live in 3.0.2, the pre-Wrath of the Lich King patch. Almost all buffs and debuffs will work raid-wide -- Warriors shouts, Shaman totems, Paladin auras, and more. There are approximately 30 categories into which raid buffs and debuffs fit. All raid buffs/debuffs have been put into one or more of these categories. Most categories have only one or two buffs in them; see the post for the category breakdown. Buffs cannot stack within each category; only the most powerful one will apply. For instance, Battle Shout and Blessing of Might will no longer stat. "Mana battery" action (such as Vampiric Touch) is changing significantly. It won't depend on damage done any more. Whenever such effects occur, the ten people in the raid with the lowest mana will receive a buff called Replenishment restoring 0.5% of their maximum mana each second. This buff will be provided by Shadow Priests, Survival Hunters, and Retribution Paladins. Heroism/Bloodlust will now affect the entire raid, but you can only be hit by it once every five minutes.
Powershifting mostly killed in Wrath
Anyone who's done much research on Feral druiding, especially cat form, has probably run across the concept of powershifting. Basically, powershifting plays off Furor (a talent that pretty much every Feral druid has) by shifting out of cat form and straight back into it to reset your energy to 40. If you do this at 80 energy, of course, you've just lost 40 energy, some mana, and a global cooldown, and there's no point to that. But if you do it at 0 energy, you've just traded a GCD and some mana for 40 energy, which is often worth it. Powershifting was made even easier in a recent patch with the door opened to macros like "/cast !Cat Form", which shifts you in and out with one button press instantaneously. This no longer works in the current LK beta build. Now, as explicated at length by blue poster Jimmythenumbers (who we here at WI have never heard of), Furor works by setting your energy to the amount you would have if your energy regen had been working while shifted out, up to a maximum of 40 energy [reworded for clarity]. For instance:
3.0.2 PTR imminent
We haven't seen much PTR action in a little while (although I guess the beta realms are really a PTR for Wrath). That may change soon, though: the European PTR forums were just wiped, and Tigole recently said "3.0 will be on the PTR's soon." Disregarding his apostrophe abuse, and Blizzard's colorful history with the word "soon," this does conspire with the forum wipe to indicate that the PTRs will probably be up with this pre-Wrath patch within, I'd say, a week or so. What does this say about the Wrath release date? Well, I'd say nothing, really. In the same post, Tigole mentions that some patches were on the PTR for over two months (which is good because a lot of the new talents are really half-baked right now). Additionally, 3.0.2 could come any amount of time before LK. 2.0.1, the pre-Burning Crusade patch, came a bit over a month before BC was released. There is one notable advantage to bringing 3.0.2 to the PTR as soon as possible: more testing. While a fair number of people are in the LK beta by now, everyone who wants to (and had an active account the last time the PTR authentication server was updated) can access the PTR. As I mentioned above (and as Tigole agreed in his post) none of the classes is done yet, and the more people we get play-testing them, the better.
Alpha: DK mount, starting gear?
More delicious rumors are starting to surface regarding what the Death Knight starts out with. Recall that he springs fully armed like Athena from Eastern Plaguelands (which when you think about it is kind of the forehead of Azeroth; it is, at least, a giant headache), and we were told earlier that he will come with the ability to summon a normal-speed mount. Well, rest easy: from what I'm seeing, it seems that mount does indeed greatly resemble the Baron's Deathcharger (Baron's mount pictured; to see the DK mount, look here). And there was much rejoicing.
Alpha: Changes to existing abilities
Some kind soul just dropped by the Wrath alpha wiki and posted a whole slew of purported changes to existing spells and talents, slated for Wrath. I trust these changes even less than the usual alpha information I see floating around (hence the "rumors" category on this post), but other people on that wiki's community do seem to be verifying them. And they do jive with what you can see at this site, for what that's worth. Of course, even if they are really what's showing up in the alpha, they have a long ways and a lot of change to go before Wrath goes live.There's a lot of interesting, strange, and flat-out unlikely stuff on there. As usual, for the full list of alleged changes go look at the wiki. Here are some of my reactions:
Priests in Wrath: Analysis of Alpha talents
I would like to take a moment to talk about the leaked Priest spells and talents from the Wrath friends and family alpha. We have decided not to keep this information on the site for legal reasons, but there are many other places on the internet to find it, such as this wiki (which, by the way, seems to have been semi-locked to prevent recurrences of Tuesday night's rampant vandalization). Note that these are alpha leaks (for those not conversant with software testing, alpha comes before beta, and beta comes before release), and most of these talents and spells will change before Wrath goes live. Some of them will probably not be recognizably the same, or even there at all. Nevertheless, it's certainly something to talk about in a game that, in my opinion, has had far too little change over the past couple of years.
Music from the Wrath of the Lich King login screen
Allegedly, this is the music that you'll hear at the Wrath of the Lich King log-in screen. I love it! It achieves just the right blend between savage and graceful, haunting and heroic, and of course it contains the main WoW motif that we all have come to know and hum at inappropriate times (or is that just me?). I've seen this file in a couple places now, and if it is fake, it's extremely well-done. Kudos to Blizzard, assuming it's not fake; this is another piece in a long line of great atmospheric music.
Blizz updates Death Knight site
They may be slower than all the fan sites to release info, but when they do put up pages, my do they make them pretty. Blizzard has updated their official Wrath of the Lich King page with some more information on the Death Knight class, including discussion of their class role and some sketches of their capabilities. This is nothing we haven't already seen, from that time a week or so ago when every site except us got invited to Blizzard HQ a few weeks back, but if you missed that, here's the highlights: All you need to be able to create a DK is to have a character of level 55. This allows you to create one DK per realm, on any realm(s) you choose. If you're on a PvP realm, the DK must be the same faction that you're already playing. DKs start at level 55, and can be made in any race you want (subject to PvP realm faction restrictions). The DK can tank for 5-mans and raids; Blizz claims that "his or her damage output while tanking will be respectable." DKs can also spec for DPS, using both melee and magic.
Psst...want some WotLK alpha talent info?
As you may have noticed, Blizzard sent us a request that we remove unreleased information relating to spells and talents in Wrath of the Lich King, and we have chosen to comply with that request. However, obviously that cat is out of the bag (and was before we got there), and if you want to find that information, one good place to look for it is the Wotlk leaks wiki.From flight paths to pictures to spells and talents (including those for Death Knights) to profession information, that wiki is a great resource for unreleased information. Obviously this is stll alpha information, and everything is unfinished and changeable -- if any of you were playing WoW in alpha or beta, you know how much things changed before release (and after). Still, it's nice to get a glimpse of what's in store.
Death Knight talents revealed
DeathKnight.info has posted, and our independent sources confirm, a first look at the current state of the Death Knight talents. These come covered in caveats, most especially that they're from the Friends & Family Alpha and will almost certainly change in the coming months, and that this is only the two deepest tiers of talents. However, if you're as desperate for this sort of information as I am, you won't mind. Let's get right into it.For some of you, this may be considered spoilers, so in case you don't want to see the talents, I've placed them after the jump. If you do want to see, click on!Update: Blizzard has asked us to remove the information.
