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Jade Dynasty expands with a Vengeance
Sadly, there's no Bruce Willis, but there is a lot of martial arts action (which we feel is a fair compromise). Jade Dynasty, the free-to-play MMORPG from Perfect World Entertainment, is releasing Vengeance on August 25th, and the update looks to bring plenty of additional content to new players and veterans alike. If it's faction choice you want, Vengeance has it in the form of the manipulative Celan or the dangerous Rayan assassins. Also new to Jade Dynasty is the Territory Wars system, featuring alliance vs. alliance warfare that varies from server to server depending on player actions. If PvE is more your style, check out the new daily events and daily quests, as well as ten new world bosses designed to test your martial arts and magical mettle. Finally, the Vengeance expansion introduces a cross-server partying system to ease the pain of finding a group, as well as a unique take on auction houses that rewards players based on their bids. For more details, be sure and visit the official website.
Cataclysm Class Changes: Protection paladin analysis
While the above was the most-looked-forward-to possible change in Cataclysm, we still didn't get it. Hopefully, the developers will come to their senses and change this horrible oversight on their behalf, but until then we are perfectly happy with just adding the tauren to our list of Light-touched brethren. Yesterday, the paladin class previews brought us a brief glimpse of things to come. Some of them were expected, while others were a little more out there. Overall, I think there will be a lot of tweaking to the class as a whole in the coming expansion. We're going to see more defenses removed from our brothers and sisters in the other specs as well as having some of their tools become available to us. Let's take a look at some of these changes after the break.
Cataclysm Class Changes: Death knight analysis
I'll be completely honest: If I were to describe the death knight update with three words, it would be these: We need more. PvP-focused death knights will likely be pleased with the new revealed skills, but for PvE death knights, all three hold little to no PvE applicability. The new rune system's original explanation is somewhat convoluted, and while I think I have a handle on it after some extensive testing and theorycrafting, we really can't say much about how well it will work until we know more about how our abilities will be rebalanced. The talent discussion mostly focused on telling us what we learned a few days ago when we were told blood will be the only tanking tree. Essentially, given this update, a large part of me wishes they had just held off until the beta. Right now, we just don't have enough information to make anything more than vague educated guesses about how the new rotations and abilities will play off of each other. That said, it's still worth a look at what's going down, so let's start it up and see what we can surmise.
Ready Check: Cataclysm Class Changes and their effects on raiding
Your intrepid WoW.com staff has obviously been glued to the official forums just like everyone else, as we anxiously watch for each new bit of the Cataclysm class changes to be announced. Since the class changes apply to both PvE and PvP, it can be hard to get a good picture of how these announcements will affect the raiding game in Cataclysm. Heck, we don't even know what the raiding environment is going to be entirely like in the new expansion, so it's hard to get a handle on what anything really means. That being said, however, some of the old standbys of raiding are going to obviously be pretty mixed up. The warrior Sunder change is probably one of the biggest deals. As Matthew Rossi pointed out in his analysis, Sunder Armor and Devastate have been so iconic to the warrior class that this debuff has been a staple of raiding since vanilla. It's so thoroughly pervasive that there are entire guilds named after the ability, like Wait for Sunders. Although warriors aren't by necessity the main tank any longer, most physical heavy raids will at least wait until a full stack of sunders are applied to the boss before keying Heroism or Bloodlust. The decreased effect of sunder will mean that this key ability isn't such an obvious timer any longer. We'll get by, and we don't know how much the debuff will matter to our overall input, but raids will definitely feel different.
Cataclysm Class Changes: Warrior analysis
Well, hey, how about that Inner Rage, huh? I seem to recall asking for something like that a couple of weeks ago. Maybe I can see the future. In which case, where are these insights when big lottery jackpots are on the line? So far, looking over the warrior changes I see some good, some bad, some very good and some we don't know yet. So let's get down to brass tacks, as it were. Bornakk Heroic Leap (Level 85): This ability makes the character leap at their target and apply the Thunder Clap ability to all enemies in the area when they land. Heroic Leap will be usable in Battle Stance and shares a cooldown with Charge, but the Juggernaut and Warbringer talents will allow Heroic Leap to be used in any stance and possibly while in combat. The cooldown for this ability might be longer than the Charge ability, but it will also apply a stun effect so you can make sure the target will still be there when you land. source I really have nothing negative here. I hope they can make it work out, since in Wrath the biggest issue with this ability was its targeting. I assume they're getting around that by making it require a target to work, as the language seems to indicate.
Paladins to receive some Blizzard love
Reader VyseV1 took some time off from lurking on the official forums to point us in the direction of a post where Ghostcrawler responds to some Paladin concerns... with love. Alright, I'm exaggerating, but at this point, after the class has been dealt some severe nerfs, his responses are more than encouraging. In particular, he mentions that the eventual plan is to put Divine Shield and Avenging Wrath on the same 30 second cooldown, indicating that the Forbearance hotfix was a mere band-aid.Ghostcrawler also mentions that Divine Shield's attack speed penalty -- a remnant of the days when Paladins largely got majority of damage from auto-attacks -- will be revised to a reduction in total damage done. This means that Sacred Duty will likely be reworked to accommodate this change. One of the more interesting points that he brought up applies to all mana-based classes but is great news for Retribution Paladins who have paltry mana pools: Blizzard will be changing mana drain effects to take away a percentage of total mana instead of a flat number.
Patch 3.0.2 primer for Retribution Paladins
Let's face it. Retribution blows.Blows things up, that is. Out of all the trees -- and I mean all including the other classes -- no tree got more love than Retribution in the Echoes of Doom patch. For many of us, it's been a long time coming. No other class spec has been the butt of more jokes and the target of such derision as Retribution. Not anymore. Not in Patch 3.0.2 and the days leading up to Wrath of the Lich King. Retribution deals so much pain that we've sent the rest of player base running to Ghostcrawler crying for a nerf. And we're getting nerfed. To the ground.Don't panic. The changes are really, mostly aimed at PvP Paladins -- okay, that's me -- but will largely leave Paladin PvE damage output the same. That's excellent news. Because I've grown accustomed to the idea that quite a lot of you guys prefer PvE to PvP, we'll take a look at a PvE Retribution build that will make you the darling of your Heroic runs and more than welcome in raids. Let's bring on the pain after the jump.
[UPDATED] Paladin changes in Beta build 8926 part I
This is one of the biggest patches to hit Paladins in a while, and it's a mixed bag. Let's get the bad news out of the way first -- all of Seals have been nerfed. All of them. Seal of the Martyr / Blood, Corruption / Vengeance, Wisdom, Light, Justice, Righteousness and even Command have all had their damage reduced. The formulas are tweaks of the values of attack power, spell power, and weapon speed -- a bit complicated to explain in detail -- that result in an overall damage reduction. Now, before everyone gets their panties in a bunch, let me say one thing: don't panic.We can probably consider this patch the nerf patch, which is an essential part of the tuning process. The developers traditionally start from a high power scale and fine tune it downwards -- I mean, look at the poor Death Knight. This is still the Wrath Beta, and while there is a chance these numbers might stick through to live, testing these lowered numbers are vital to getting everything right for release. If you're in Beta, log in, play with it for a while, and give feedback. If you're not in Beta, hold back a bit from making a ruckus and exercise a little patience until the testing is done. Let's take a deep breath. Now where'd I put my inhaler...
The Light and How to Swing It: Bracing for change
We know a second pass is coming. As good -- or bad -- as everything might seem right now, Paladins have yet to get another look from the developers and as Ghostcrawler mentioned on the forums earlier, they're nearing finalizing those changes soon. A few days back, Blizzard asked the players for feedback on all three trees, and it looks like all those constructive comments are finally going to see some results.The good thing is that, despite all our misgivings about how the class has been handled all these years, it seems that Blizzard is finally listening. Holy wanted ways to be more mobile and have group healing utility... the Wrath Beta brings creative ways to solve that with instant Holy Lights and double duty healing. Protection needed stat consolidation badly, for starters, and it's slowly moving that way with Stamina granting spell power through Touched by the Light. Retribution needed raid utility among other things, and Blizzard is shaping up the spec to be a mana battery like Shadow Priests (and Survival Hunters). It's not everything players have wished for, but it's pretty darn close and there's no doubt that we're moving in the right direction.
Ghostcrawler's late night Paladin news
Ghostcrawler displays her dedication yet again as she popped up on a few of the Wrath of the Lich King Beta forums in the wee hours of the morning today. Or would that be late last night? What does 2 AM qualify as, again? Anyway! Ghostcrawler popped into the Paladin forums to check in with some concerned players, and brought some fun news. She says herself that it may not be 100% what Paladins want, but it should prove to be good stuff regardless. Let's dig right into it, shall we?From Ghostcrawler: We'd like to do something else with Kings. I don't know that a core ability is the answer, but burying it deep in Prot, when Prot paladins would just as soon play with BoSanc, doesn't feel great either. We'd like to mess around with the top 2 tiers of all 3 trees, still encouraging you to cross-spec a little, but making that initial bite into the upper tier more tasty instead of just an icky appetizer to get the what you really want down deeper
Wrath Beta patch notes: Balance Druids
Now that the Wrath of the Lich King Beta is live, and the patch notes are up, we have some solid information on Druid talents as they're being tested. Here is what the patch revealed:Balance treeIf you were to invest three points into your Brambles tier three talent, you will not only have the current 75% boost to damage caused by Thorns and Entangling Roots, but your Treants will have their damage boosted by 15%. In addition, all damage caused by Treants, and any attacks done to you while Barkskin is active, have a 15% chance of dazing the target for three seconds. Actually, Force of Nature, which summons your Treants, is having its cooldown reduced from three minutes to two. This will be a nifty talent for Moonkin in battlegrounds and arena, although it won't be enough to convert all of those Restoration druids to the ways of the Giant Chicken.
Why all race Death Knights make sense from a lore standpoint
It seems like one of the biggest problems a lot of people have with Death Knights is the fact that they can be all races. Me, I say: Why not? The lore really isn't as bad as you might think. Sure, some of the retcons can get a little annoying, but despite the fact that non-Paladin races will get to be Death Knights, I don't think you really consider it a retcon, but rather an evolution in an ever-evolving story that opens up a lot of great story ideas and RP opportunities, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Gamers on the Street: Oceanic players persist despite performance issues
Gamers on the Street logs onto U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.Oceanic players continue to snarl this week at continued server performance issues that cramp their play. Oceanic subscribers playing from the other side of the world have dedicated servers, yes – but the servers are physically located in North America, and no consideration seems to have been given to shifting maintenance and resource-intensive background processes to non-peak local hours.Needless to say, a good number of Oceanic players are up in arms over spiraling post-2.4 performance issues. Blue reps continue to take the heat from red-hot flames, reflecting a continued determination to work through the problems. We decided to pop in on a couple of Oceanic servers themselves, away from the heat of the forums, to see what the player temperature seemed to be.
Build Shop: Paladin 5/8/41 + 7
Every Tuesday, Chris Jahosky contributes Build Shop, which takes a look into one of the many talent specs available to players.Welcome back to the wonderful world of Build Shop! I've got a lot to say this week, since this is a spec that is near and dear to my heart (even though my Paladin is Protection spec these days) -- Retribution. I've tried to strip it down to the essentials (or what I think is the essentials) so that you can shift points around depending on what you want to do with it.
Gank Frank parts 4 and 5 posted
Fenrix of Bloodhoof was nice enough to ping us and say that the next two installments of Gank Frank -- his awesome little graphic novel about a gnome with a taste for vengeance -- have been posted on the Funkytown forums. As before, the storyline continues to follow the movie Kill Bill, with a few extra gnomey (and WoW-related, although there's a Simpsons reference in there as well) twists and turns. And the graphics look terrific. Along with our own Tales from the Lion's Pride Inn, those crazy machinimists ain't got nothing on these graphic artists.Great job as always, Fenrix, and we can't wait to see the rest of the story.
The Light and How to Swing It: Three easy steps to Retribution PvP
Regular Paladin columnist Elizabeth was crit by an insane amount of work at, well, work and her co-columnist Chris is away completing his own epic quest, so like those duplicitous Blood Elves, I'll be stealing the Light for this week and swinging it around. Since most of the stuff I write on the site concern the one thing I really like to do -- PvP -- I think I'll get into character and write about something that some people find taboo... Retribution PvP. After writing about a few rules on healing in PvP, let's indulge ourselves with a little retributive mayhem. Despite being the most ridiculed spec in the entire game, Retribution can be a lot of fun -- and painful for your opponents -- once you get some fundamentals down pat.Step one: gear upIf you are at all interested in PvP as a Retribution Paladin, you must get geared up. There are no two ways about this. Unless you have the proper gear, you will simply not perform as well as similarly-geared classes and your PvP experience will be diminished greatly. Retribution is one of the most equipment-dependent specs in the game, and you will feel it in PvP. Chris has written an excellent starter guide for all aspiring Ret Pallies, which is an excellent read for learning about the perfect Retribution gear. In order to do some PvP, we'll then need to take the next step and go beyond what Chris suggested and aim much higher as far as at least one piece of equipment is concerned -- your weapon.
Darkmoon Faire Decks: An overview
As I've mentioned before, The Darkmoon Faire is currently in Terrokar Forest, just outside Shattrath City, so if you have decks to turn in or need to refill your private stock of Darkmoon Special Reserve, now's the time to get on it. But if you're still a little bit taken aback by the prospect of gathering all those cards, or wondering if the trinket at the end will really be worth it, we'd like to help you out. In this post, we'll be looking at both the old and new decks and listing some pros and cons of each deck so you can figure out if you want to spend the next month tracking down cards before the Faire shows up in Elwynn Forest in March, or even if you just want to blow your epic flying mount fund on getting a deck before it leaves for the month. We'll start in on everything after the jump.
New Darkmoon cards stats revealed
I was never able to collect any of the Darkmoon cards (although I'm pretty sure I have six or seven of the Warlords cards sitting in my Warrior's bank), but I always thought they were a great idea. Since the expansion, however, the old cards haven't been quite up to par for level 70s. Enter the new Darkmoon decks-- Blue announced a little while ago that there would be new cards to collect, and now Tiare has compiled what the new Darkmoon trinkets will do for you when completed.[Darkmoon Card: Vengeance] (Ace - Eight of Storms)You have a 10% chance when hit by an attack or harmful spell to deal 95 to 115 holy damage to your attacker.[Darkmoon Card: Wrath] (Ace - Eight of Furies)Each time one of your direct damage attacks does not critically strike, you gain 17 critical strike rating and 17 spell critical strike rating for the next 10 sec. This effect is consumed when you deal a critical strike. (Stacks up to 20 times)[Darkmoon Card: Crusade] (Ace - Eight of Blessings)Each time you deal melee damage to an opponent, you gain 6 attack power for the next 10 sec., stacking up to 20 times. Each time you land a harmful spell on an opponent, you gain 8 spell damage for the next 10 sec., stacking up to 10 times.[Darkmoon Card: Madness] (Ace - Eight of Lunacy)Each time you land a killing blow on an enemy, you gain the Power of Madness.Unfortunately, we're not quite sure what "Power of Madness" means-- it could be anything from a simple beserk buff (+Damage and Spell Damage, -Healing recieved), to a shapechange to a Worgen, or even "Opens a portal into the Twisting Nether that periodically summons demonic minions to aid the caster in battle for 14 sec." (at least that's what the rumors say).But sweet cards nevertheless. The Wrath and Crusade cards look especially cool, but I'm confused about the 10 second limit-- someone with Wrath can supposedly build up to a whopping +340 crit rating, but does that mean they somehow have to hit 20 times (without critting) within 10 seconds? Is that even possible? I don't see it procing more than two or three times before the ten seconds are up or a crit appears.[ via MMO-Champion ]
Far Cry trailer reveals new enemy
In the latest promotional trailer for Far Cry Vengeance, a new inhabitant of the island, and enemy to Jack Carver, is revealed. Frankly, we're absolutely frightened of this new enemy and anxiously await your input.
Far Cry Vengeance designer speaks
We've suspected that Jack Carver would make a showing on the Wii for some time now and it was no surprise when Ubisoft finally gave up and admitted it was happening. Turns out IGN managed to interview the Wii version's designer, Fabrice Cuny, and extrapolate several details on the game as well as a slew of screens. This isn't just Far Cry Evolutions Predator with a new coat of paint, however, as Cuny is quick to explain that Vengeance will feature a new storyline, maps, and weapons.Of the new maps, 3 were mentioned as Tourist Resort, which is a hotel setting, an abandoned WWII base, and a fuel refinery. The new weapons that players will be able to wield in these environments are a machete, a Bull44 revolver, G18 automatic rifle, and more that Cuny would not reveal. Also, it is confirmed that Far Cry Vengeance will able to run in 16:9 and progressive scan.Head on over to IGN and check out the new screens.
