reforging
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A case for transmogrification and reforging engineering pets in Mists of Pandaria
I want to get this idea out there, in hopes that some friendly designer smiles upon it: Transmogrification and reforging bots for engineers in Mists of Pandaria. It might seem like a little trivial, given that these are just a matter of hearthing back to the city to do right there, but that's not always a good and viable option. When raiding, you don't have a ton of space to do things for only yourself, and you need to take into account the rest of the group's time. Reforging pets, in particular, would be a boon for raiders. Often times, a new piece of gear can be quickly enchanted and gemmed (I know I always carry a few extra gems and enchanting mats on me when I expect to get a big new piece of gear); however, the reforging and "thinking time" (or Ask Mr. Robot time) that's necessary for high-end raiding isn't easily done. People can try to hearth and do it quickly during a scheduled break, but that's rarely practical. Transmogrification pets would be less critical but would fit nicely into the engineering motif of providing unique gadgets and toys that provide at least some level of usefulness and/or fun. Engineers already have their own special teleportation generators and can make some fun pets and whirligigs. Letting them and others transmog their gear at a remote location, possibly through a Jeeves-like item, would be a nice addition to the engineer's toolbox. So what say you, Blizzard, can we have some mogging and reforging pets, please? We promise to only transmog to look like Whitemane (and maybe the Stormwind or Orgrimmar guards).
Are pure DPS classes really just another form of hybrid in disguise?
Once upon a time, my guild was trying its hardest to down 25-man heroic mode Lich King. It was the very end of Wrath, and we were running out of time to put an end to the boss before the inevitable launch of Cataclysm. I had been playing an assassination spec since some point between Ulduar and ToC, having given up on ever obtaining a really good combat weapon (I was partial to fist weapons; something about punching people in the face with knives appealed to me), and I was really good at it. I spent forever poring over stat caps and best-in-slot items and had just gotten the perfect set of items that capped every stat that needed to be capped. And then it happened -- the prep patch for Cataclysm. Do you know what the best stat is for an assassination rogue in Cataclysm (other than hit, of course)? Mastery. Do you know what wasn't present on any Wrath gear? Mastery. My DPS went down, and due to sup-par burst DPS, I was sat for the realm-first 25-man heroic mode Lich King kill. I watched all my guildies ding the achievement and get the one title I was really excited about. And later, one of the officers, a druid, asked me flat out -- why didn't I have a backup combat spec? Oh ... if only he knew.
Have reforging demands become too complex?
Have you ever cringed at the idea of picking up a new upgrade because you knew it meant you were going to have to reforge almost every single piece of gear you wear? Do you actually consider picking up more than one of the same item so that you can have it reforged differently for different specs? Do you ever want to punch that smarmy, overly reverbbed ethereal in the face after you dump several hundred gold reforging all your gear because there was no negotiation? (You just charged me a flat fee, you jerk!) That last one may just be me. Reforging gear has become a huge part of optimization. It is at least as important as gemming and enchanting. Sites like WoW Reforge and Ask Mr. Robot (to name just two) are heavily consulted by players looking to squeeze every last erg of performance out of their gear. Is it too much? Has the minigame of stat tetris gotten out of hand?
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: 2011's warrior in review
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. In the past, I've done Year in Review columns and liked them well enough. The first one I wrote was in 2007 and discussed rage normalization, which to my eyes was the biggest and worst change the warrior class had undergone in The Burning Crusade. Flash forward four years. Here we are in 2011, and rage normalization has been with us for a year and the sky didn't fall. This has me in a contemplative mood. The future is Mists of Pandaria and a new talent system, but right now, it's time to look back at what were the biggest developments for the warrior class. I don't necessarily mean good or bad, here. These are simply profound changes, things that may have also affected other classes but which definitely affected us. While 2011 was a year we made contact (because we're melee, we have to make contact) it was also a year of a great many changes. Mastery I've talked about it before, but mastery really has been a game-changer for warriors this past year. Fury warriors got so much out of the stat before patch 4.1 that the amount of mastery they have at base was nerfed from 8 points to 2 points. It worked, after a fashion, because until patch 4.3, it became impossible for fury warriors to assemble enough mastery to make them interested in the stat again. It may be possible with Dragon Soul gear for TG fury, but with arms the dominant DPS spec for warriors in Dragon Soul raids right now, it's not likely to be tested exhaustively.
The Tattered Notebook: What's free and what's not?
Tuesday, December 6th is going to be a very busy day for the EverQuest II team. The devs are launching an expansion, patching a game update, and performing the transition to make all servers free-to-play, simultaneously. And just as the dust settles from all of that, Frostfell is due to begin shortly after. With the stream of news announcements over the past month, there's bound to be confusion over what's free and what you'll need to pay for. Even veteran players have had questions about the game update versus the expansion, so in this week's Tattered Notebook, we'll give a rundown of what's what and even add in some handy links for more details.
Patch 4.3 PTR: New interface for reforging
I know that there's wisdom in the adage "if it's not broken, don't fix it," but there are times when I'm very glad that Blizzard doesn't adhere to that philosophy. Case in point: the new reforging interface on the 4.3 PTR this week. I'm a chronic reforger. I've spent many a lonely night at Godan's Runeworks in Orgrimmar, turning crit into hit and haste into mastery. The reforging interface on live is a boring brown and black box, with pulldown menus to help you choose the stats you want to reforge to. While the reforging interface served its purpose well, Blizzard has made some excellent changes to it for 4.3 to make it significantly more user-friendly. Whereas on live, you use a pull-down box to choose the stat you wanted to reforge from and then another pull-down box to choose what you want to reforge into, the PTR reforger has all your options presented in the same frame, making reforging faster and easier. It also is now a shiny purple color, much preferable to the drab darkness of the live version. It now features a reminder on your reforged items that you'll need to undo the stat change to reforge again, which is helpful for the airhead in me who sometimes accidentally restores the wrong item. Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Review the official patch notes, and then dig into what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!
Addon Spotlight: ReforgeSaver lends a hand
Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. Few times in my World of Warcraft existence am I truly stunned when an addon does something so simple and effective that a happy laugh emits from my dropped jaw. Truly, hyperbole is necessary when we talk about ReforgeSaver, a wonderful utility from addon creator Jordans. Pressing one button and making many things happen, almost like magic, is a good thing in my book.
Lichborne: Gemming, reforging, and other gear tweaks for blood death knight tanks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. Last week, we discussed the basics of death knight tanking, including finding your perfect spec and figuring out which stats to aim for. This week, we're taking it one step further. Once you're all geared up, you need to put the finishing touches on your gear. Today, we'll look at how you can use gems, reforging, and enchants to bump your tank gear up to the next level.
Encrypted Text: Deftly handling your dual-spec rogue
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions you have or awesome screenshots you'd like to see featured. Dual talent specialization used to be an expensive upgrade reserved for players with good money management. As time has passed since its inception, its level requirement and cost have decreased dramatically. Everyone can afford dual talent spec now, and the benefits are easily recognized for hybrid classes. What once was a 30-minute trip to a capital city to respec between roles has become a short cast that can be performed anywhere. Pure DPS classes can still use dual spec to their advantage, and rogues are no exception. I'm going to be honest and tell you that subtlety is still not competitive in PvE. While its unrivaled survivability does come in handy on a few heroic encounters, its damage output is simply not strong enough to warrant regular use. Combat and assassination are our two most potent talent trees, and so most rogues will be sporting these specs in raids. While assassination still holds the DPS crown on most encounters, combat's Blade Flurry can be useful for dungeons and even raid bosses like Halfus Wyrmbreaker. By properly planning our rogues, we can play both specs with a deadly efficiently.
Encrypted Text: Even rogues have homework
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any screenshots you'd like to see featured here or any questions you might have! I hate homework. When I was in school, I was always finding creative ways to turn my assignments in as late as possible. I completed most my English assignments the night before they were due, and I've solved a few calculus questions in the car on my way to class. No matter how important the assignment was, there was always something more interesting that I would rather do. When it comes down to a heads-up match between playing Warcraft 2 and studying biology flashcards, there's really no contest. Playing a rogue successfully in the endgame of World of Warcraft requires a lot of homework. We've talked before about the very math-centric natures of rogue theorycrafting. Without a spreadsheet or other mathematical tool, it's almost impossible to create a working model for testing DPS and checking gear. Boss abilities are constantly changing and being added, and they often interact with our abilities in non-standard ways. Blizzard's developers are implementing fixes on a daily basis. In order to keep up with the pace of WoW's development, you simply have to do your homework.
WoW Rookie: Reforging 101
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. As the story goes, the ability to reforge magical items was introduced to Azeroth by the Highborne. We don't really know the in-game lore of how, when, why, or where, but we do have it fairly clearly that the knowledge came from the Highborne. Reforging allows you to customize your magical items by substituting one secondary stat for a different secondary stat. The stats that are eligible are the ones in green text at the bottom of an item, such as critical strike, mastery, expertise, and so on. (We'll do a full list behind the cut.) You can only swap about 40% of a single secondary stat, and the item must be at least item level 200 or higher. (Items have levels similar to player characters, and those levels help determine how much of each stat bonus that item can provide.) The stats that are not eligible to be reforged are stamina, intellect, strength, and agility. These stats are considered set in stone and have very little variation in the amount of each stat, even on different items of the same item level. Since that's the case, you can probably see why you're not able to re-allocate those points.
Encrypted Text: The rogue guide to gear customization
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Email me with any good screenshots or questions you have! Back in the good old days, rogues were stuck with whatever leather gear that happened to drop. It didn't matter if it had spirit or strength on it, as we really had no other options. We could augment our pieces with a few different enchants, but even those were better suited for warriors. While sometimes it seemed as if there were a random number generator churning out tier loot, we happily scooped it up anyway. The class, and everyone else, was at the mercy of the itemization gods of Blizzard. Times have changed quite a bit since those days. While we're still not able to craft custom pieces of gear tailored to fit our every need, we're not stuck with caster stats anymore. With the number of dungeons and bosses available, combined with the addition of justice points, there are a ton of options for nearly every slot on our character sheet. Enchanting has grown to encompass most of our gear, while reforging and the gem system have taken gear customization even further. Not only is there more gear to be had, but the gear we do get is much more malleable, allowing us to pick the perfect combination.
Encrypted Text: Slicing up hit and expertise for Cataclysm rogues
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me, especially if you've been playing subtlety lately! I love hit and expertise. While their mechanics and nuances can be complicated, I enjoy the diversity they bring to our gear options. We have stats like critical strike chance, which give us a chance to hit harder; haste, which lets us hit more often; and of course, hit and expertise, which let us hit our targets more often. The interaction between all of these different gear stats is one of the most interesting parts of theorycrafting for me. Think about it, would you really enjoy picking gear if you were just choosing between haste, mastery, and crit? Unfortunately for us, hit and expertise are also our only two remaining stats with tangible caps on their potency. While we were able to cap out on critical strike chance and armor penetration in the past, one of those stats has been rebalanced and the other completely removed. Because of the caps in place, hit and expertise's value drops off immediately after reaching that golden value, and so we're left always keeping those caps in mind.
Lichborne: Death knight regemming and reforging for patch 4.0.1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. Now that we've had a bit of time with patch 4.0.1, hopefully you've settled in to a decent rotation and spec and have begun to feel your way around the new system. Now that you've done that, there's one more step to take: figuring out the best way to reforge and regem your gear. Reforging can be done through certain NPCs in major cities and is a process whereby you take one secondary stat (the ones in green text) and reforge part of it into another stat. This process can be very useful for getting rid of extra stats past the soft cap or just plain getting rid of stats that aren't important for your class or spec. You can't reforge a stat into another stat that's already on the item, but otherwise, your possibilities are endless. Gemming remains more or less how it always has. The one big, new curveball we've been thrown is the fact that hit gems are now blue. This is probably overall a win for DPS death knights, as it gives us a few more options to aim for gear bonuses without handicapping ourselves as much. To understand how, when and if to regem and reforge your gear, you'll need to understand stat weights. While it's still pretty early in the 4.0.1 game (and therefore, it's not completely clear what stat weights are for every spec), the death knight community has still done enough math that we're relatively certain of the general order. With that in mind, let's look at every spec and figure out the best ways to regem and reforge.
Totem Talk: Enhancement post-patch theory
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 04 now out!) as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. This patch hit me hard, harder than any patch before it, and I know I wasn't the only was one to be drastically affected by it. Other than the usual spate of patch-related addon issues, I was struggling to keep the downloader connected. After turning off all anti-virus, firewall and other sorts of computer safety monitoring programs, I finally got into game on Friday night. Mostly, though, I just lacked time to log in this week. Once in game, I was faced with just as many challenges getting Stoney in order and raid-ready as I was trying to get online. This patch was more disruptive in game than any patch before. A far an enhancement goes, there's so much that still needs to be tested and refined. The greater enhancement community is working hard at the theorycrafting, but even the simulations are not fully refined for level 80 testing; the latest alpha of EnhSim is tuned to level 85 right now. The decisions I made in game are based on the best available data as well as some things I want to test out for myself. There was a lot to accomplish in-game including, respeccing, retraining, regemming, reforging, readjusting and refining.
Spiritual Guidance: Raid-ready 4.0.1 shadow priesting in 10 easy steps
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, your shadow-specced host Fox Van Allen copies Dawn Moore's latest column word for word and pastes it into Auto-Tune. After all those sour, holy-flavored notes are removed, what comes out is better than anything Jason Derulo could ever hope to achieve: priesting, perfected. If you're a regular reader of Spiritual Guidance -- and I hope you are, because it's your page views that give me my special, magical powers -- then you know how excited I've been for patch 4.0.1. I've been beating it over your head for weeks. Well, I can't tease you with it anymore, because that fabled new frontier of shadow priesting is finally here. It plays an awful lot like a new season of your favorite sitcom: entirely recognizable as that which you love, but with a few new twists. In patch 4.0.1, you create massive numbers of copies of yourself simply by moving around, your shadowfiend is on a variable timer and Betty White is your new anthropology teacher. (Change is confusing sometimes. Roll with it.) With the way everything just changed overnight, it's all too easy for a shadow priest to feel in over his head. Worry not, though -- the magnificent (though self-aggrandizing) Fox Van Allen has you covered with a comprehensive, ten-step checklist to get yourself raid re-ready for 4.0.1. New stat values, new gemming guidelines and even new enchanting info -- it's all here, and it's all after the break.
Cataclysm: Official reforging preview
Blizzard has just posted its official preview of the new gear customization feature, reforging. Allowing players to decrease secondary stats on an item for something more favorable, reforging gives players more options for items and easier upgrade potential, rather than waiting for their exact pieces of gear to drop. Check out the official preview. Zarhym -- Cataclysm Preview: Reforging Originally a magic brought to the citizens of Azeroth by the Highborne, reforging will provide a new means for players to customize their gear in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. NPCs offering reforging services will be located in all major cities, ready to assist in customizing items by altering the stats they provide. Players can use reforging to modify an item's stat values, or to undo any previous changes and allow different customization choices. Check out the preview now! source %Gallery-104732% This is it! Patch 4.0.1 begins the slide into December's upcoming expansion. It's a whole new game from here on out. Get oriented with our roundup of everything there is to know about patch 4.0.1 and how it changes the game until the launch of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.
World of Warcraft gets patch 4.0.1 tomorrow
Blizzard has made the official announcement that it's releasing patch 4.0.1 for World of Warcraft during the game's maintenance tomorrow morning. This is basically the expansion patch for the biggest MMO in the world -- even though World of Warcraft: Cataclysm doesn't arrive in stores until December 7, this patch will bring many of the mechanics and system changes to the game that players have been awaiting, including a huge amount of class changes and updates, a revamp to the glyph system and a new system of reforging items to change their stats. This patch will also include the recently announced guild changes and lots of other updates and tweaks to ready the world for the game's third expansion. You may not actually be one of World of Warcraft's 12 million players any more, but even if you're not, we thought we'd give you a heads up. Patch 4.0.1 is the reason all your friends will be back playing the game later on this week.
Blizzard announces patch 4.0.1 releases tomorrow
The stars and planets have aligned. Some celestial body out there is in some sort of retrograde. Ancient civilizations have predicted something akin to the events tomorrow. Patch 4.0.1 is coming, and you need to be ready for it. Here's the official announcement: Bashiok -- Extended Maintenance 4.0.1 Release - 10/12 Extended maintenance will begin tonight at midnight, Tuesday, October 12 for the release of patch 4.0.1. Maintenance will begin at 12:01 AM PDT and conclude at approximately 12:01 PM PDT. During this time all realms and many web services will be unavailable. Due to the size of the patch we highly recommend you enable your background downloader. If you need assistance doing so please visit http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=35274 source There are some pretty major changes coming to World of Warcraft tomorrow, so it's time to learn to play all over again. Read about your new class features here. Read about the new glyph system here. Read about the new reforging system here. Don't forget to turn on your background downloader if you want to be able to log in sooner tomorrow. 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.
Patch 4.0.1 introduces reforging into the game
One of the features that is in patch 4.0.1 is the new reforging feature. This allows you to adjust armor, weapons and trinkets to better line up with the stats you need. The whole concept essentially allows more gear to be used instead of disenchanted. It also allows you to game your stats a little bit more by turning an item that would be providing way too much hit rating into something that provided some hit rating and critical strike rating. There are a few restrictions: You can only change secondary stats (hit, crit, haste, mana regen, dodge, etc.). Only one stat may be changed. You can't change one stat into a different stat the item already has. You can't alter how much of the stat to change; it's always 40 percent(ish) of the original amount. The item must have an item level of at least 200 (level 80 epics or higher). Otherwise, the price of reforging is the same as the sell price of the item. You can always restore an item back to its original stats for free if you decide you don't like the new setup. This allows you to try out different setups (paying the full reforge cost each time) until you find the right fit. Where can you find these reforging guys? They are usually found in major cities near the enchanting trainers. If you can't find them, be sure to ask a guard, who'll point you in the right direction. All in all, the reforging system is pretty simple and provides the opportunity for us to start trying out the new mastery stat without waiting for Cataclysm itself to be released. If you'd like to take a look at how this works, here's a gallery walking you the process through step by step. %Gallery-104732%
