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The OverAchiever: Reputation factions in Cataclysm
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we find ourselves the designated butt-monkey of several new factions. Hello again, fellow achievement-hunters. This week we're going to finish up with a look at the new reputation factions available in Cataclysm and a quick look at new world events. "There aren't any new world events," you point out. That's what makes it so quick. Although this goes without saying in any article discussing new achievements, there are a few spoilers in here discussing how you meet and work with various Cataclysm factions. If you'd rather stay unspoiled about upcoming quests, don't go past the cut. 45 Exalted Reputations This is now the highest reputation-related achievement in the game. Interestingly, there is not a new title associated with it; you'll still receive The Exalted at 40 Exalted Reputations, although it's possible that it's just a placeholder. Then again, if you already have 40 exalted reputations, getting 45 should be very simple during Cataclysm, as there'll be at least six new reputation factions available. I'm not sure a new title's going to be in the cards as a result.
Encrypted Text: Fresh rogue rotations in Cataclysm
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the rogue class. This week, we discuss the new rotations that rogues will be using. After Blizzard's latest press release, we know that Cataclysm will be released in early December. We already know that there will be at least one patch that precedes the expansion. The period of time between patch 4.0.1 and the expansion's actual launch is a time of transition, and it's rapidly approaching. The transition phases of The Burning Crusade and Wrath were rocky to say the least; it's safe to say that that we're looking forward to exciting times. Many classes are hurting pretty badly on the PTR for patch 4.0.1 right now. Blizzard had the great idea of temporarily granting rogues Cloak of Shadows as our 31-point subtlety talent back in patch 2.0 to help us deal with the souped-up casters of that era. A similar change could be used to give retribution paladins access to Inquisition (at the cost of Zealotry) to bolster their damage until Cataclysm. Luckily for rogues, we were on the receiving end of the latest "damage pass." Several of our core abilities were granted significant damage and scaling bonuses to keep us competitive in a pre-Cataclysm world.
Spiritual Guidance: Shadow priest glyph shopping for 4.0.1 and Cataclysm
Welcome to the Wednesday edition of Spiritual Guidance, your one-stop source for all the information on shadow priesting you want and need for your on-the-go lifestyle. Your host Fox Van Allen brings information on your spec of choice on a silver platter, helping you stretch your World of Warcraft knowledge to infinity and beyond. Sit back, relax and prepare to be "wowed"! I have a confession to make: I've never really found glyphs to be that sexy. I don't know why. Maybe part of it was the hassle of having to travel halfway across Stormwind to find a Lexicon of Power just to add a glyph to my character. Maybe it was the frustration of learning later that I didn't need to find a Lexicon of Power to add a glyph, and the shame that came with knowing I had wasted about 30 or 40 trips along the canals over the last year and a half. Still, sexy or not, glyphs are powerful as all hell. They provide useful benefits by increasing our DPS, eliminating the need for reagents or reducing cooldowns. There's no reason not to like these damn things. And if you already like them on the live Wrath servers, you're going to love what's coming for glyphs in Cataclysm. We're about to have even more choices to make than ever before. That may seem a bit daunting, at least at first, but don't fear -- we're going to be better shadow priests for the experience. More slots, better choices and added convenience: It's all coming in patch 4.0.1, and it's all here in today's Spiritual Guidance, just after the break.
The Queue: BlizzCon expectations
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Today's edition of The Queue is brought to you by our old friend Hawaiian pizza -- or at least, it would have been if I hadn't been half asleep while ordering my pizza and ended up accidentally clicking "add bacon" instead of the topping(s) I wanted. Now my pizza is just covered in poorly cooked bacon bits. Woe is me. Woe. adalon asked: Is it just my imagination or has the Cataclysm release date not had the same amount of buzz that previous expansions had?
Shifting Perspectives: Predictions for Cataclysm druids
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting feral/restoration druids and those who group with them. This week, Allison hauls out the crystal ball again. I enjoy the business of prognostication. Nobody remembers the crap you'll get wrong -- and if you get anything even vaguely right, you'll be considered a visionary, thanks to a wonderful little thing called confirmation bias. Personally, I've had it up to here with beta dungeon groups. I'm sick of idiots who start to AoE off the pull while I'm tanking and tanks who say, "Give me 10 minutes to fix my bars" while I'm healing. I've had quite enough of titchy little numbers that insist on changing from patch to patch. It's time to return the Tuesday portion of this column to form -- hog-wild speculation and completely baseless conjecture!
Lichborne: Heroic Cataclysm dungeon-delving for death knights
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly source for news, guides, tips and opinions on the death knight class. OK, I'm not usually one to use tired old catchphrases, but forgive me, I'm going to use one right now: You are not prepared. That pretty much sums up Cataclysm heroics, especially as they are now on beta. Chances are, you've grown used to the easy stuff we have in Wrath. Not only are Wrath heroics a little underbalanced, and not only have patches specifically made them easier and faster to run, but at this point, we're running things in tier 9 and 10 gear that were made for people in pre-tier 7 gear, and we're steamrolling them. All this ends with Cataclysm heroics. I cannot stress this enough. You see that picture up there, at the top of this article? You'll be seeing that a lot. Cataclysm heroics are hard. They are hard enough that the random dungeon finder may end up being something you want to avoid in favor of creating your own group so that you can work together and get the proper balance of crowd control and skill. While some of the difficulty comes because we'll all be in dungeon blues, some of it is because the dungeons are genuinely set up to be harder, with harder-hitting mobs and bosses with mechanics that require you to use utility moves to have a chance of beating them. With this in mind, I have a few tips for you on getting ready for the new heroics. Trust me, you'll need them, if you don't want to spend all day wiping to the first trash pack in your first random heroic.
Cataclysm: New 600-member hard cap imposed on guilds
Large guilds face a certain number of unique challenges. Beyond the usual demands of leading large numbers of players, guilds with memberships greater than 500 have an unfortunate tendency to break the guild interface. Up until now, this has been more of a nuisance than anything else -- Blizzard has never imposed a hard cap on guild membership. (WoW Insider's very own guild, <It Came from the Blog>, stands at 1,100 members, for example.) Blizzard was keenly aware of the problems that these large guilds suffered, promising earlier in the summer to address them for Cataclysm. Well, not-so-great news, members of giant mega guilds: Blizzard is effectively throwing in the towel on large guilds and imposing a hard cap of 600 members effective the moment patch 4.0.1 goes live. While the official blue post by Mumper says this will have no effect on 99.9 percent of guilds, this move could effectively devastate the remaining 0.1 percent. The full text is available after the break.
Officers' Quarters: Leveling as a guild in Cataclysm
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available this spring from No Starch Press. The weeks after an expansion goes live are a strange time for guilds. After months of working as a team toward a common goal, most members go off on their own to level up through solo quests. Since raiding at the cap is impossible and raiding old content isn't nearly as interesting as questing in the new zones, your guild can find itself strangely fractured during this time. This week, one guild leader wonders how to keep a guild from falling apart during the leveling process. Scott, I was a member of a "raiding" guild in The Burning Crusade (they didn't do too much raiding), but I hit level cap a week before Wrath of the Lich King came out. The guild basically came apart at the seams before anyone hit level cap. Then they tried to reform again a little before ToC and nothing really worked out. Now I'm running my own little raiding guild and don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past. What keeps a raiding guild together through the leveling process? I was thinking about putting in incentives in our loot policy for people getting to cap, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea. What are some things I should be doing, and what are some things I shouldn't be doing? Thisius Hells Vanguard Sisters of Elune (US)
The Queue: Launch day
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Today we tackle, among other things, a couple of questions about Cataclysm's upcoming release. Oh man, it's getting close, people! Get excited! ... Did you hear me? I said, "Get excited!" You. You. In the back. Yes, you. You're not excited, are you? If you don't leap for joy right now we are going to have problems, mister. Or ma'am. I can't tell from here. bdew asked: With the new Battle.net system and the ability to buy games from there directly, did Blizzard say anything official about being able to buy Cataclysm digitally on Day 0?
Cataclysm release date set for December 7
Blizzard has just issued an official press release setting Dec. 7, 2010, as the official release date of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion. Press Release IRVINE, Calif., Oct 04, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) - Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft(R): Cataclysm(TM), the highly anticipated third expansion for the world's most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game*, will be released starting on December 7, 2010. The expansion will be available on DVD-ROM for Windows(R) XP/Windows Vista(R)/Windows(R) 7 and Macintosh(R) at a suggested retail price of $39.99 and will also be offered as a digital download from the Blizzard Store. A special Collector's Edition packed with bonus items will be available exclusively in retail stores for a suggested retail price of $79.99. "Cataclysm includes the best content we've ever created for World of Warcraft. It's not just an expansion, but a re-creation of much of the original Azeroth, complete with epic new high-level adventures for current players and a redesigned leveling experience for those just starting out," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "With the help of our beta testers, we're putting on the final polish, and we look forward to welcoming gamers around the world to enjoy it in just a couple of months." The first two World of Warcraft expansions, The Burning Crusade(R) and Wrath of the Lich King(R), each shattered PC game sales records upon their release.* In Cataclysm, the face of Azeroth will be forever altered by the return of the corrupted Dragon Aspect Deathwing. Players will explore once-familiar areas of the world that have now been reshaped by the devastation and filled with new adventures. In an effort to survive the planet-shattering cataclysm, two new playable races - worgen and goblins - will join the struggle between the Alliance and the Horde. As players journey to the new level cap of 85, they'll discover newly revealed locations, acquire new levels of power, and come face to face with Deathwing in a battle to determine the fate of the world. The beta test for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is currently underway. Visit the official Battle.net(R) website at http://www.battle.net to set up a Battle.net account and sign up for a chance to participate. To learn more about World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, visit http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm.
The Light and How to Swing It: Cataclysm heroics from a holy paladin's perspective
Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we examine how it feels to heal a heroic in the new expansion I've been spending my evenings churning through heroics on the Cataclysm beta. It's a bit unsettling to heal as a holy paladin in the dungeon environment, because it feels like you're playing bizzaro-WoW. Holy Shock is your main heal, Holy Light isn't the button you go to when your tank is dipping dangerously low, and you're actually watching for procs instead of settling into a steady state of heal spamming. Not only that, but we've now got options when it comes to healing more than one target. Our precious Glyph of Holy Light is gone, but it's been replaced by far more powerful options. Holy Radiance allows us to heal either melee or ranged players, based on our location. Light of Dawn gives us our AoE toolbox a ranged option, with a sweet graphic effect to boot. The core fundamentals of paladin healers are still around, and our Hand spells are still as potent as ever, but now we've got a more robust set of tools to handle every situation. Needless to say, your number of keybindings will expand significantly.
The Queue: The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice!
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Dogs and cat-bat-scorpions living together! Mass hysteria! Bobury asked: When Deathwing comes, where does he come from and which places does he hit first? Deathwing emerges from Deepholm, breaking the "ceiling" of the elemental plane of earth and coming out in the center of the dimensionally weak Maelstrom. We know he visits several places afterward, including Mount Hyjal, Badlands, Stormwind and Orgrimmar.
Arcane Brilliance: Catching up on mage Cataclysm changes
Each week, Arcane Brilliance steps out of a portal from parts unknown, bringing with it a knapsack full of delicious mage content conjured expressly for your consumption. Try not to overconsume, though. Nothing's worse than waking up one morning to discover your robes don't fit and your fingers are too chubby to waggle your wand properly. And after that culinary intro joke, it's time we got to the meat of the matter -- specifically, the Cataclysm beta and the constant mage changes going on therein. Each week (and sometimes more than once during each week), a new beta build hits that brings more new stuff for mages. Sometimes these changes are big, and sometimes they're not, but I feel like it's high time we spent a column talking about the more recent ones. I've let like five builds go by without dealing specifically with this stuff, so we'd better get going. I figure we'll start with the most important change and move forward from there.
Cataclysm rewards low-level faction loyalty with cloaks, bags
While stomping around your home city in Cataclysm, you might notice a new quartermaster NPC hanging around the travel area. He or she stocks a total of five items (at least so far), shown above: a high-resolution city tabard that requires friendly standing with that city; a reasonably-priced 16-slot bag (unique) requiring revered standing to purchase; and level 35 blue cloaks (also in gorgeous high resolution) in caster, agility and strength varieties, requiring exalted standing. What's interesting about the required reputation on these items is how they relate to the leveling process. If you choose to stay on your "main" continent -- Kalimdor for night elves, for example, or Eastern Kingdoms for Forsaken -- then your reputation will hit the proper level just as these items become useful. The tabard can be picked up at any time, since almost every race starts at friendly standing with its faction's cities. The bag, on the other hand, shows up at a point in the leveling process when a new player (or fresh reroll on a new server/faction) is going to start wishing he had another big bag like the backpack. And the cloaks are available at level 35 -- a level at which, on my worgen fire mage, I had just hit exalted with Darnassus and was very close to hitting exalted with Stormwind. So on top of a cloak tailored to my spec, I also had two 16-slot bags available -- which for a new player is like winning the lottery. This is a great way to educate new players on how WoW's reputation system works, and it provides some neat rewards to boot. 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, 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.
The Queue: Definitely not a kitten, at all
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. I think we can all agree that the above picture is not a kitten, thus ending the cute-baby-animals theme used in header images in The Queue once and for all. The Dark Wayne asked: There's one question that's been on my mind ever since 3.3 came out: Will we be able to obtain Shadowmourne or at least Shadow's Edge in Cataclysm? If we can, will we also still be able to get the fancy box of lore trinkets that drop when you kill the LK with it? Given that it's part of the We Are Legendary guild achievement, all signs point to yes.
The Queue: Yes, kittens again
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today. Don't like kittens? Too bad, I've got a room full of them, plus enough pictures of them to wallpaper the Taj Mahal. Nyold asked: I have a question about mastery system. A lot of the description says something like "each point of mastery increases the damage by an additional 2%." Does this mean each mastery RATING found in gear, or is there another conversion from mastery rating to mastery skill (kinda like how crit rating and crit percentage is)? Mastery works like most other ratings in that there's a conversion from the points you have on gear (rating) to the effect you see on your character window (skill). The formula varies from spec to spec.
Flexible raid locks in patch 4.0.1
In patch 4.0.1, Blizzard will roll out a new "flexible raid lock" system in Icecrown Citadel and The Ruby Sanctum. This system has a few major changes in it, outlined below: You are no longer locked to the raid upon zoning in, but to a specific boss kill. You are no longer locked to a specific raid size or group. Heroics have greater restrictions placed on them. All Wrath raids will use this system once Cataclysm releases. All Cataclysm raids will use this system. This only applies to raids and not to normal or heroic dungeons. The full Blizzard statement after the break.
Raid Rx: The evolving healing UI
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. If you're looking for more healing advice, check out the Plus Heal community. I race-changed to a goblin. I look so weird with the hair and riding a Frost Wyrm. It feels like my mount could eat me in one gulp. Little by little, Blizzard continues to make adjustments to the default user interface to make the overall experience better. I don't think its intent is to completely stamp out third-party addons. But it is nice to have tools and features already in place so that a player doesn't have to feel required to get some addon in order to do something. In the past, players used threat addons like KTM and, later on, Omen. For healers, though, the ultimate addon we need to do our jobs is some form of raid frames. Whether it is Grid, Vuhdo (see the Cataclysm version if you wish to test it on the test servers) or something else, it is these addons that give us the capability to keep the raid alive and remove nasty debuffs. The default raiding UI falls short in many areas. It's not really bad or anything; we just had better choices. So what new UI elements are out there that help make the experience a better one for healers overall?
The OverAchiever: Do them now!
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, it's time to get a move on. We've had some recent news concerning achievements in categories we've already covered, and my original intent this week was to play catch-up with that in addition to finishing off the new reputation, world event, and feat of strength achievements in Cataclysm. However, given equally recent news concerning achievements that are set to become feats (and may do so as early as patch 4.0.1), I thought it would be more sensible to cover the stuff that you'd want to do as soon as possible before it disappears. I've cross-checked the list of known Cataclysm feats of strength against the feats already present in game, and as far as I know, this should be a comprehensive set of current Wrath of the Lich King achievements that will become inaccessible as of patch 4.0.1, patch 4.0.3, or Cataclysm's release (or at least, a comprehensive list as of the current beta and PTR builds). I've written this list assuming the following: Although it hasn't been officially confirmed that all of these will disappear in patch 4.0.1 or 4.0.3 rather than the expansion itself, for the time being, I'm guessing it's one of the two patches you need to worry about. With the recent announcement of arena Season 8 ending on Oct. 12, 4.0.1 may hit in less than two weeks. Zarhym's post just made it clear that the season could end as early as the 12th, not that it definitely would, and there's still a lot of stuff to fix on the PTR and beta -- but every Tuesday from hereon is a potential patch day. Accepting Oct. 5 or 12 as possible patch dates, I've included an opinion on the feasibility of getting the following achievements done as quickly as possible.
Spiritual Guidance: Welcome to Cataclysm heroics, shadow priests
Welcome to the Wednesday edition of Spiritual Guidance, where your host Fox Van Allen takes on the darker, shadowy side of priesting. While your holy columnist Dawn Moore was busy trying to plant suggestions regarding the alleged superiority of healing, Fox was busy casting Mind Control to demonstrate the superiority of the shadows. Right now, on the live Wrath servers, shadow priesting seems to fit like a glove. That's not necessarily a result of our class and mechanics being perfect -- they're not. It's a result of their feeling familiar. We've been playing under the rules of patch 3.3 for nearly a year now and it feels natural; it feels right. We're blessed with strong damage and near unlimited mana -- provided we put in the effort to know how to make both of those a reality. It's hard to accept that 4.0.1 is bringing such major changes, especially in the realm of that once unlimited mana bar. It's gone, and it's not coming back any time soon. If you need any evidence, consider this: After slashing mana regen to the bone last week, Blizzard followed up by cutting regen even more this week in the latest beta build. (For something called a "nerf," these cuts sure hit like a Mack truck, don't they?) These changes to regen may make the 80-to-85 leveling process more tedious, but they don't necessarily make it more difficult. If the pinch is going to be felt anywhere, it's going to be in 5-man instances, heroics and raids. Since raids aren't quite available yet, I decided to queue up for some heroics instead to get as much Cataclysm endgame flavor as I could. Can our mana bars handle the stress? How weird and different are our new rotations? And how can shadow priests add much-needed value to a party above and beyond the standard DPS abilities in Cataclysm? The answers to those questions -- plus a stunning 47,306 damage crit -- are all after the break.
