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Patch 3.2: Horde Tier 9 plate armor set gallery
After doing some digging in Patch 3.2's latest PTR files, I've assembled a gallery of the new Horde Tier 9 plate sets. The shoulders are slightly unfinished, or at least looked like they were in WoW Model Viewer. The gallery includes Death Knight, Warrior, and Paladin themed sets. In a move that bodes well for Alliance mail armor, the Horde Paladin sets are blood elf themed, so we'll see how that goes for our Draenei Shaman friends (read: me).I'm not too upset about the looks, myself. They look very Horde, even if the helm screams "Onslaught", and the colors are quite different for each class -- even more so than on the Alliance plate pieces.Have a gander and enjoy! I'll dig through every new PTR patch that comes out looking for the Horde cloth and Alliance mail and leather sets, so keep your eyes open for updates here. %Gallery-67758% Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!
Lichborne: The Future of Death Runes in Patch 3.2
Welcome to Lichborne, the Death Knight class column, with your host, Daniel Whitcomb, who's still wearing mourning black for AE Unholy Blight. And also because black looks awesome.I admit to being a bit underwhelmed by the Death Knight Q&A. To be fair, this is primarily because most of the things covered were already in the 3.2 patch notes, and the rest was pretty common sense stuff. However, one little comment by Ghostcrawler did catch my attention: His praise of Death Runes. This caught me more than a bit by surprise, since, if anything, the Death Knight changes in Patch 3.2 seem tailor made to discourage the use of Death Runes, at least for Frost and Unholy.Between the damage buff to Blood Strike and diseases, and the nerf to Scourge Strike, we have a pretty good chance of seeing people move away from using Death Runes. The major reason to use Blood Strike in both trees right now is to create Death Runes so you can use higher damage abilities on your next refresh cycle. If Blood Strike becomes the higher damage ability, it's not worth it to use the Death Runes on something else. There's a off-chance, I suppose, that you might want the Death Runes handy for an emergency use of Ghoul Frenzy, in theory, but that chance is so slim that no-one's going to want to waste the talent points in Reaping, at the very least.
Blizzard gives sneak peek at Tier 9
Blizzard put up a preview of a couple of Tier 9 sets over at the Under Development section of the official website, and they look pretty interesting. As previously suspected, the Tier 9 armor sets seem to share visual characteristics with the same armor class. In the examples that Blizzard shows, the Horde Shaman and Hunter -- both mail-wearers -- are similar in appearance. Two other examples are the Alliance Priest and Warlock, cloth-wearing classes, who look largely similar.The good news with these faction-specific armor is that the design team has put a decent effort into making the sets somewhat distinguishable from one another. For example, the Horde Shaman's shoulders are reminiscent of the Earthfury Epaulets from Molten Core, distinct from the chitinous design of the Horde Hunter. The Alliance Priest and Warlock designs are a lot closer to each other, however. But don't take my word for it... head over to the Under Development page and check out the previews for yourself. I'm pretty stoked and can't wait to see the rest of the sets! %Gallery-67303% Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!
The Daily Quest: They really are
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Grey Matter really dislikes the Moonkin set bonus on the recently unveiled Tier 9 armor. Pink Pigtail Inn has a pretty convincing argument for why "more epics" does not equal "new content." Burnout? With all of the new patch 3.2 information coming down, Pike doesn't know anything about burnout. Rhii of ISheepThings, on the other hand, isn't real happy with the World of Warcraft today. And finally, Sydera over at World of Matticus waxes philosophical about exploits and how Blizzard is punishing them. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Patch 3.2 brings universal tier armor tokens
I had concerns when Blizzard first announced the way bosses would be unlocked in Patch 3.2's new raid instance, the Argent Coliseum. Blizzard has announced that while the first boss is available immediately, other bosses will be unlocked week-by-week. It's not the first time an artificial barrier has been put up for raid progression -- hello Sunwell -- so I guess I'm not shocked by it, but progression wasn't really what I was concerned about.In our current raiding system, each boss drops a pre-determined set of loot. Some bosses drop a token which can be turned in for a piece of armor matching that particular slot, and the boss will always drop this same slot token. Thorim will always drop a shoulder token in Ulduar 10, for example. So the issue is, with the Coliseum officially being our new tier of raiding, with gear that far outclasses Ulduar gear, and with the Coliseum bosses being unlocked each week, it means that players could get screwed out of upgrades. Your chestpiece might not be the greatest, so if you were looking forward to upgrading it, you'd be pretty crushed to find out that the T9 chest token only drops off of the final Coliseum boss -- which will only be available (at best) a month or (at worst) several weeks more than that due to RNG. It turns out that Blizzard was thinking the same thing I was. That's why, with 3.2, Coliseum bosses all drop one of three universal armor tokens -- the Regalia of the Grand Protector, Vanquisher, or Conqueror.
Spiritual Guidance: Tier 9 healing bonuses
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a new UI and addons blog for WoW. A brief look at the tier 9 sets and the origins of those who it is named after: Velen and Zabra Hexx. We're getting more news as the weeks go by. Last week, tier 9 information was released. As some of you may know, the upcoming Crusader's Coliseum is slated to drop tier 9 items. All classes are getting three levels of the latest tier. I'm assuming one set drops from normal (10-man), heroic (25-man), and heroic hard mode.
Patch 3.2: Tier 9 set bonuses changed in new PTR build
The Patch 3.2 PTR has been updated to a new build, and the set bonuses for many Tier 9 sets have been changed or updated. In the update, they made the priest set bonuses not terrible! And the updated Elemental shaman ones aren't terrible now either!I guess the feedback from the threads Ghostcrawler posted has been going to good use. But don't forget -- if you're still unsatisfied, say so on the proper forums and make your voice heard.Otherwise, check 'em out below! Thanks to WOTLKWiki.info for mining these so quickly.
WoW Insider Show Episode 96: Tips aplenty
We went live with the WoW Insider Show yet again last Saturday, and this one was a good one: not only did Turpster and Lesley Smith join us, but we were also graced with the presence of Michelle Madison, of the podcasts Warcraft Outsiders and Video Game Outsiders. She was kind enough to make it past all of our inside jokes (she agreed it was prounounced "Fah-jord," which is as it should be) and mixed it up with some great discussion, including about the Midsummer Fire Festival, the new Tier 9 gear coming to the game (and the lore figures they named it after), and whether including quest objectives on the official map dumbs things down too much (spoiler: we basically said no).It was an excellent show, and you can tune in to hear it by following any of the links below, or subscribing to our feed right over on iTunes itself (that guarantees you get the new shows every single Monday). We'll be back next week as always, so be sure to tune back in then.Oh, and while we have you, keep an eye out soon for more information about what we're doing at BlizzCon. We've already scheduled our meetup on Thursday night around 8pm, but we haven't announced a location yet, so look for that soon. And if you aren't going to be in Anaheim, worry not -- we'll be streaming a special episode live from the meetup (with video, if everything works out as planned), so you'll be able to join us virtually. Will be really fun, so stay tuned.Get the podcast:[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.Listen here on the page:
Breakfast Topic: What's your item set design preference?
It looks like we've got a sneak peek at what may be the new tier sets when MMO Champion uncovered some gear intended for Paladins, Death Knights, and Warriors. Just in case you didn't notice, that's all plate gear and, well, they all look alike. With Patch 3.2 seeing the return of faction-specific armor, a lot of people were thrilled except that most players (including myself) sort of forgot that faction-specific gear such as the old Level 60 PvP sets had shared models across armor types.The reason most of us didn't notice was because this wasn't so apparent back then... the Alliance only had one mail-wearing class and the Horde only had one plate-wearing class. With Shamans and Paladins no longer restricted to one faction and with the introduction of Death Knights in Wrath of the Lich King, more classes appear to share the same item models -- there are three plate and two mail classes on both factions now. This has the downside of homogenizing appearance across classes but the upside of having the near-certainty of putting together a visually cohesive set as well as looking different from the enemy faction's counterparts.So today's question is simple: what design philosophy do you think works best for World of Warcraft? Every path has its obvious benefits, of course. What appears to be the most appealing is something we still haven't seen... faction- and class-specific gear where each class has a completely unique model according to faction. It sounds great on paper but it's more work for the art team and an itemization nightmare -- imagine having to organize those drops in a dungeon! It might be easier to go the Sunwell Plateau route and be done with it! Or heck, do everything Emperor's New Clothes-style, where everyone goes commando! Good idea? No? So, uh, that was just me? Drat. %Poll-31391%
Patch 3.2 PTR Tier 9 reawakens faction pride and... homogeneity?
When Blizzard announced that the new Tier 9 sets with Patch 3.2 would be faction-specific, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who thought how awesome that would be. It would mark the first time tier sets would be themed to a faction. It was something many players had been asking for. But as the saying goes, "be careful what you wish for..." In this case, players such as myself are actually going to see the return of faction-specific armor except that there's one niggling detail we'd forgotten about the first faction-specific gear sets (Level 60 PvP) -- they were armor class-based.That's right. As wonderful as many players thought those faction-specific armor sets were, they were actually somewhat homogenous in that classes that shared the same armor type (i.e., cloth, leather, plate) had the same models. Apparently this is Blizzard's philosophy with armor set design: either the class sets are faction-neutral but look distinct from each other or they are faction-specific but look the same across armor class. The only time Blizzard broke from tradition was with the much-maligned Sunwell Plateau gear which was both faction-neutral and shared a look across armor class. It felt lazy.
Patch 3.2 PTR Tier 9 set names
Even though Blizzard already said that they'd be introducing a whole new set (or sets) of tier gear, it's still a little overwhelming to see information for Tier 9 gear considering that Tier 8-8.5 has only recently been unleashed with Patch 3.1 and Ulduar. Still, Patch 3.2 looks like some ways off and we can't get too excited about the Call of the Crusade just yet.As soon as the PTR went live yesterday, Alex and Adam scrambled to put together a whopper gallery of Tier 9 gear which might've overwhelmed the whole lot of us who were all too eager to find out what goodies are in store with the new patch. While a lot of things can still change now until the patch goes live, we do know a few things. Check out the Tier 9 sets in the gallery below, which has been re-organized by class and spec (because we love you all that much), and let's take a look at the Tier 9 sets after the jump. %Gallery-66710%
Tier 9 to come in three quality levels
10-man ilvl 25-man Naxx 200 KT, EoE 213 Naxx Ulduar 219 Ulduar hard 226 Ulduar, KT/EoE CC 232 Ulduar weapons 239 Ulduar hard CC hard 245 CC 258 CC hard Well, that answers that question. According to what MMO-Champion has found in the PTR item database, Tier 9 gear from patch 3.2's Crusader's Coliseum raid comes in three different versions for each set (T7 and T8 come in two, from 10- and 25-man). There's one version at ilvl 232, one at 245, and one at 258. This leads to the following loot distribution, I'd guess: 10-man normal (232) < 10-man hard (245) = 25-man normal (245) < 25-man hard (258) Others (such as 10n < 25n < 10h = 25h) are logically possible, but to me, that's the most likely distribution that leads to three different ilvls. It's also the way Ulduar is done with normal and hard modes, apart from some differences in weapon ilvl. Crusader's Coliseum on heroic is a bit different than Ulduar hard modes, though. It seems that when you do a heroic CC raid, you start out with a certain number of attempts (wipes), and the more attempts you have remaining upon defeating the final boss, the better loot you get. So will ilvl 258 gear be contingent upon beating CC-heroic in (say) fewer than half your attempts? I guess we'll have to wait and find out. Of course, the really important question is: what the heck will we call the 3 different sets? T9.0, T9.33, T9.66? Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!
Patch 3.2 PTR unveils Tier 9 sets
Now that the PTR is up, the floodgates have been opened. We're beginning to see a ton of new information about the next major content patch, the Call of the Crusade, including but not limited to the new Tier 9 sets. I know, it's crazy, right? I haven't even completed my Tier 8.5 set and here comes Blizzard dumping all this new gear on my lap. Ok, it's technically not that easy to get the gear but it'll certainly be easier with the new badge loot system. It's the dawn of the casual age of WoW, and Blizzard is taking a huge leap experimenting with dungeon modes.Whatever happens, we players win. So take a gander at pieces of the Tier 9 sets, which are available on the Tournament Grounds on the PTR for a token piece and small change (and purely for testing purposes, Michael Sacco notes that one vendor is giving away tier sets for a song). While there aren't any models for the gear yet -- they're currently using Tier 8+ placeholder graphics -- it's interesting to note that there are two sets of gear for each spec. They're identical items, just named differently for the Horde and the Alliance because, as Blizzard revealed, Patch 3.2 marks the return of faction-specific gear. Even cooler, Blizzard departs from the old tier set naming convention by naming the sets after notable figures in Warcraft lore. Check out all the items in the gallery Alex and Adam painstakingly put together. You know you want to. %Gallery-66640%
Patch 3.2 T9 set bonuses and relics
Continuing on the data-mining train, we have now learned the set bonuses from the tier 9 gear that is coming in patch 3.2 (confirming, by the way, that there will be a real tier of gear in the Crusader's Coliseum raid). There is also information available on some new relics for the relic-bearing classes (Paladin, Druid, Shaman, and Death Knight). Information after the break. Keep in mind some of these are certainly placeholders. The priest healing 4-piece, for instance, is strictly worse than the priest healing 2-piece Tier 8 bonus; there's no way it would go live like this. Some of the bonuses don't even make any sense, like the Warlock 4-piece. Datamined info is always suspect.
How will they do the loot in Trial of the Crusader?
For my money, the most interesting things they're doing in patch 3.2 are the changes to the badge system and the reimagining of the 10- vs. 25-man raiding paradigm. The new raid, Trial of the Crusader, will be available on both normal and heroic difficulty mode for both 10- and 25-man groups (the heroic mode is called Trial of the Grand Crusader). In other words, there are a total of four versions of the raid: 10-normal, 10-heroic, 25-normal, and 25-heroic. They're all on separate lockouts Those of you who know certain past posts of mine could probably predict what my mind jumps to from that news: how will the loot be done? I see four three major possibilities. 10-normal and 25-normal drop the same gear, while 10-heroic and 25-heroic drop a tier above (10n = 25n < 10h = 25h). 10-normal drops one kind of gear, 10-heroic and 25-normal are equal to each other and better than that, and 25-heroic is best of all (10n < 10h = 25n < 25h). All four raids drop different levels of gear, 10n < 10h < 25n < 25h. If you've read my past stuff, you could correctly guess that #1 would be my favorite option. I don't really want to argue it here (or in the comments), because I've had that conversation more than I care to already.
Patch 3.2 changes the tiered Emblem system
There are a lot of things in the patch 3.2 test realm notes that jumped out at me, but the changes to the Emblem system seem like an especially big deal. The developers made it quite clear that they wanted a tiered token system in Wrath of the Lich King, they didn't want players just farming Heroics all day and night to get the best possible gear. In patch 3.2, it looks like they're backing off on that pretty heavily, likely an attempt to reignite interest in running Heroics. If you haven't seen the patch notes, here are the points I'm referring to: Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism. Both the 10 and 25 player instances of the Crusaders' Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph. The heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph. The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable.
Crusaders' Coliseum details released
Bornakk just released some major details of the Crusaders' Coliseum, the new 5/10/25 man dungeon that will be released with Patch 3.2.First and foremost, this will be the next tier of raiding. There was some speculation that this would be an interim tier of raiding, however that is not the case. The gear that will come out of the Crusaders' Coliseum appears to be Tier 9.Secondly, the encounters will be unlocked one per week until all five encounters are available. This mirrors very closely the way the Sunwell Plateau was handled back in Patch 2.4.Finally, there will be a new "Crusaders' Tribute" mechanic. The mechanic appears to track the number of times you attempt an encounter, and the fewer times it takes you to complete the encounter, the greater the loot will be for the final boss. A type of raid where you are going for the Tribute rewards will be called a "Tribute Run."For further information about the upcoming patch check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2.The full details of the announcement after the break.
The Queue: Tier 8, wormholes, and more
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.The above video is a video that has been posted very, very early in the Wrath beta, possibly even the alpha. Originally thought to be Tier 7, it's actually the next tier up, Tier 8. There are a few graphical glitches in the armor because it hadn't been fully implemented yet at the time the video was made. Your Hunter will not have big green squares sticking out of their head, I promise. I embedded it into today's post in response to Tanglebones's question:Oh! I got a question. What the heck is Apothecary Putress wearing on his head, and where can i get one?Watch the video and found out!Covnam asked...I hit 70 on my Mage shortly before Wrath came out, so I never graduated from normal dungeons to heroic dungeons and raids. Once I hit 80, where should I go? Do Heroic dungeons come first or 10/25 man raids? Also what type of stats would you recommend before running either of these types of end game content?
