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Tier 8 set bonuses hit the PTR
A new build has hit the patch 3.1 PTR, and with it has come something that many people have been waiting on most of all: Tier 8 set bonuses! We have all of them listed below, but keep something in mind while you read them: They are probably not finished, just take this as a preview. Set bonuses always shift and change before they go live, and I can guarantee that some of these will. At the very least, they'll have some typos and grammatical issues cleaned up, and we'll find out where the missing percentage symbols are supposed to go.Death Knight DPS 2Piece Bonus -- Increases the critical strike chance of Death Coil and Frost Strike by 5%. DPS 4Piece Bonus -- Increases the bonus damage done per disease by 20% on Blood Strike, Heart Strike, Obliterate, and Scourge Strike. Tank 2Piece Bonus -- Increases the damage done by Rune Strike by 5%. Tank 2Piece Bonus -- Increases the damage done by Rune Strike by 10%.
Ghostcrawler talks some more on Retribution DPS
I'll be honest with you. Retribution DPS has made me a rather sad panda lately. It wasn't my DPS exactly, but I sat down to watch my brother-in-law farm Valkyrs in Valkyrion with his three-week old Level 80 Death Knight. He pulled about five mobs and proceeded to demolish them. With Cinderglacier and Killing Machine proccing, he hit all mobs with a Howling Blast for about 6-7k each, and topped things off with a 7k Frost Strike. It made my jaw drop. Mind you, my brother-in-law is an excellent player, so this probably isn't your average Death Knight. But then, he was only equipped in heroic gear, with his best loot being a Wraith Spear. He hadn't even hit his peak.I know anectdotal stories like these are plenty and tangential to the issue, but if you've raided as a Retribution Paladin with equally geared and skilled players, you'll know exactly what I'm trying to say. So it was a major surprise in Patch 3.1 that the slimming down of the Retribution tree hit our DPS hard with a nerf to Fanaticism (reduced to three ranks for an 18% crit, down from 25%) and Righteous Vengeance (reduced to three ranks for 30% damage, down from 40%). Was it to balance out the fact that Exorcism could be used on any target? Certainly not. At any rate, Blizzard was aware that Retribution DPS on the PTRs wasn't where they want it to be.
The Queue: Progression
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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.I would have had this written and posted earlier in the day, but I was too busy refreshing the official World of Warcraft site and praying for more news regarding the WoW Mountain Dew. I guess when they say they'll have more information in the 'coming months' they don't mean 'tomorrow afternoon.' Disappointing, really.Taylor asked..."I am just getting back into WoW now that I have a bit of free time. I am trying to get to 80 on a relatively new character of mine. I am around 50 right now and I am wondering how end game will work when I eventually get there? There are heroics and raids and all these things I hear about, but I just don't understand the progression yet. Mainly, I am worried that once Ulduar launches, I will be woefully behind without gear from Naxx. I know the whole "gear doesn't matter" argument, but I can't be in quest blues/greens and keeping up in a raid."
Live on the US Patch 3.1 PTR: XT-002 Deconstructor
Tonight from the Patch 3.1 PTR we bring you the Alliance Area 52 guild Symbolic Logic fighting against the XT-002 Deconstructor, a new Ulduar boss. They are scheduled to attempt it on hard mode, and we'll have to watch and see how it goes. You can watch it on the above stream or head over to their UStream page.For more information on the XT-002 Deconstructor fight, you can check out some great details over at World of Raids.Stream is over for the evening. Thanks for coming out everyone! Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.
Official site updated with new UI additions
The official World of Warcraft website updated recently with an addition to their Under Development section. Call it a preview, reminder, whatever you want. They've added a listing of all of the new UI features coming in Patch 3.1, and I'm willing to say that there's more UI additions in this patch than in any content patch before it. Am I wrong? Possibly, but I can't remember this much coming all at once before.If you've been following WoW Insider since patch 3.1 hit the PTR, not much of this stuff will be a surprise to you, we've tried to cover the UI additions as they were pushed onto the test realm. Regardless, the new UI page details all of the following: Talent Dual Specialization Equipment Manager Updated Objectives Tracker Looking For Group Improvements Queueing for Battlegrounds From Anywhere Go on, give it a read, and make sure you're not caught off guard by all of the shiny new UI elements slapping you in the face the day you load up patch 3.1. You can also check out the galleries below that we've done previously, which will walk you through a few of these things. If you're the type that likes surprises? Well, don't look at them!%Gallery-45754%%Gallery-45780%%Gallery-45755%%Gallery-45767%
Everything you wanted to know about Aura Mastery but were afraid to ask
Perhaps you've heard about the new Holy Paladin talent Aura Mastery. If not, here's the basics: to get it, you need to drop 11 points in the Holy tree. For your investment, you receive a new skill which will, for ten seconds every two minutes, cause your Concentration Aura to make all affected targets immune to silence and interrupt effects and improve the effect of all other auras by 100%. And though everyone tends to stop reading and gape for a moment when they hit the part about "immune to silence and interrupt," keep reading. That's right boys and girls, it will also double the effect of any aura you have up for its 10 second duration. Devotion Aura? Check! Retribution Aura? Check! Fire Resistance Aura? Frost Resistance Aura? Shadow Resistance Aura? Check, check, and check! Crusader Aura? Double-check! If you take a look at the video above, you can see Aura Mastery and Crusader Aura in action as two Paladins with Crusader Aura up race out on the Shimmering Flats racetrack. (That flash of light is Aura Mastery being aactivated.)
Sheath of Light and Sacred Shield to become friends in 3.1
Sacred Shield, a Paladin's Level 80 skill, is a pretty neat ability. Absorbing a base damage of 500, this mitigation scaled with spell power at a rate of .75 to 1, so a Holy Paladin with 2,000 spell power would absorb an extra 1,500 damage for 2,000 damage absorption. Unfortunately, Sacred Shield had a nasty spat with the Retribution talent Sheath of Light since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King. This meant that Retribution Paladins, whose only spell power came from that talent, never got more than 500 damage absorption from Sacred Shield.Patch 3.1 will, uh, patch things up between the two, who have kissed and made up and promise to play nice with each other. This is a previously reported bug, as Dresorull "the Thread Locker" has noted. He also dispels nasty rumors that Sacred Shield was never intended to scale with Sheath of Light, saying that it was a bug from the very beginning and should be addressed in a future patch. He encourages players to test it out in a future build, when Sacred Shield and Sheath of Light make beautiful music together. Neither talent could be reached for comment.
Blizzard's new raid model and why it works
The game is easy now. Really. Naxxramas was a breeze, and the only thing that gave a real challenge to raids in Wrath of the Lich King was the Obsidian Sanctum with three drakes up. Blizzard tuned raids and dungeons to become very accessible, and nowadays pretty much every Level 80 has at least stepped into Naxxramas. You know what? I think it's brilliant. There are those of you who think the game has been dumbed down, and that's kind of valid. I'd like to think of it as the game opening up.I mean, back then, who was able to raid the original Naxxramas? Sure, it was released pretty close to The Burning Crusade, but only the best of the best guilds got to try it. That's a thimbleful in a large bucket of players. I never stepped in Naxxramas before Wrath. I never did Black Temple, either, although it was being pugged after the nerfs. Quite obviously, the closest I got to Kil'jaeden was through the cinematic in Magisters' Terrace. These days, I quite enjoy being able to relate to my high end raiding colleagues in WoW Insider. Of course, most of them have done three drakes, and I haven't. My guild's come close, but when our our brother and sister team of healer and tank get disconnected during the most data intensive part of the encounter... well, it's a taller order for us. But that's besides the point. We get to experience it. We get to enjoy it. Ghostcrawler lays out Blizzard's new philosophy on raiding, and I for one appreciate it. He explains that it takes a lot of resources to produce a raid, and that "it seems an odd choice to lavish all that attention on such a tiny percent of the player base."
The Queue: WoW Insider Mobile 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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Ah, Monday afternoon! Does it get any better than this? ...Actually yes. Yes it does. Someone throw me off of a cliff, please. I want to go back to bed. Yes, I know it's almost 4 PM. I don't care.Thander asked...When you pay for the dual specialization do you also get separate gem slots?
Sneak peek at new Wintergrasp raid
Boubouille of MMO Champion was nice enough to send us some screenshots of the new wing of the raid in Wintergrasp, something he describes as "just a corridor" and too uninteresting to take pictures of. Still, he dove in there and took quite a bunch of screenshots of the vault's new wing, replete with Titan ornaments and columnar architecture. It's all reminiscent of things you've probably already seen, but still a good portent of things to come.Kalgan spoke at length about the plans for Season 6, which included some drops from the new wing of the Vault of Archavon. Just like Archavon the Stone Watcher, the new raid boss -- currently a mystery -- will also drop PvE or Tier 8 gear. There's no sign of him on the PTR, either, although I wouldn't be surprised if the boss uses an existing giant model. Check out the gallery below courtesy of those fine folk at MMO Champion for more shots of... a corridor. %Gallery-47789%
Lichborne: The Rise of Blood in 3.1
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly Death Knight news and analysis fix.The Blood tree often gets a bad rap among those not in the know. It's a decent leveling tree, but it's generally considered not to have the tanking power or AoE DPS Potential of Unholy or Frost. By all indications, that has changed in 3.1, especially in the latest patch. Not only have many key Blood talents and skills received key buffs or changes, but the very nature of Armor Penetration has changed, with the 25% benefit buff making Blood's mostly physical damage dealing style well suited to take advantage of the change. This is quite a shift from just before 3.1, when many were afraid disease-less Blood would be wiped out and leave the tree with no viable hassle-free DPS specs.
Emblems to be easier to loot in 3.1
Here's a nice and simple change that recently showed up in the official patch notes on the 3.1 PTR: Now, when someone loots a badge or emblem, everyone in the raid or party will automatically receive their proper emblem. This doesn't apply to people outside the raid instance though, so no twinking your lowbie second account character while they wait outside the instance, sorry. It's a minor change, but still a welcome one, since it's sometimes easy to forget to check the corpse when you're not in charge of loot and would rather be focusing on getting ready for the next pull.Speaking of nice instancing changes, this is something we've actually reported on before, but now it's officially in the patch notes and everything: Come 3.1, you will get a confirmation box when you're in danger of being saved to an instance so you know what you're getting yourself into. If you click no, you'll be teleported to the nearest graveyard. Hopefully that'll cut down on those annoying instances where one of your group members forgot he already cleared Sarth that week and got you all saved. Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.
Spiritual Guidance: Hymns get revamped
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 PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Hymn of Hope is back in a new way! But it's not the only Hymn to get a face lift. Divine Hymn also underwent an overhaul! Well guys, we got our Hymn back. Thank goodness. On a side note, I gave Mimiron a shot the other day (with the Sacco fellah again). We had to 9 man the guy on Normal. There was a bug where raids were unable to invite players into their group. The healers consisted of Disc Priest (me) and a Resto Druid. Yeah, the developers weren't kidding when they said 3 healers was going to be needed for normal mode Ulduar. We barely got into phase 2 intact. Anyway, lets get back to our new look Hymns. Last week I wrote about Hymns that would have never been seen in game. Blizzard decided to not only give back Hymn of Hope but to redesign it.
More new Jewelcrafting recipes found on the 3.1 PTR
Here's another nice set of tradeskill updates to show up on the 3.1 PTR recently, as Kaliope points out: New Jewelcrafting recipes. First up, Shifting Twilight Opal will now finally exist in game. This purple gem should be a great possible choice for tanks looking to fill out a metagem or slot bonus requirement, especially. It's available from Tiffany Cartier in Dalaran.
Live on the US Patch 3.1 PTR: Hodir
Tonight on the US Patch 3.1 PTR we bring you Symbolic Logic of Area 52 as they attempt Hodir. You can check them out above and at their UStream page.You can read more about this patch at WoW Insider's Guide to Patch 3.1 (including the latest patch notes), and read some impressions of Ulduar fights. We've also covered the initial release of Hodir.Hodir has been tested a couple other times on the PTR, which means the fight is getting more and more refined now. This does not mean that patch 3.1 is close to being released on the live servers, but just that some of the fights are getting a good workout.Update: The live stream came and went, and the PTR testing is over tonight. Stay tuned for more tomorrow! Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.
Ghostcrawler talks about Spiritual Attunement
If you've been keeping tabs on the Paladin changes lately, you might've noticed one thing that jumps out -- Spiritual Attunement will no longer be a skill but a talent deep in the Protection tree. Essentially a mechanic designed to help Paladin tanks keep their mana up, it was also key to Retribution Paladins' mana regeneration as it works synergistically with Seal of Blood / of the Martyr, the primary Retribution Seal.Of course, if Spiritual Attunement being removed from trainers, the self-damage of Seal of Blood becomes little more than a gimmick and an inconvenience. It also tended to invalidate one glyph, which was the Glyph of Seal of Blood. If Spiritual Attunement is deep in the Protection tree, then the glyph becomes aimed at tanks... who don't use the seal. When players pointed this out on the forums, Dresorull replied to test it out in a future build (I still had Spiritual Attunement as a skill on the PTR) and locked the thread.In a related post, Ghostcrawler lays out Blizzard's intentions for Paladin mana regeneration, saying that Spiritual Attunement is critical to Protection, but they "don't actually like Holy and Ret having (it)". He explains that such a mechanic depends too much on the encounter and gave Patchwerk as one example where SA won't return mana to anyone but a tank. He notes that Blizzard would still like to tune Paladin mana regeneration -- Holy through Illumination and Retribution through Judgements of the Wise.
New mounts for Horde, Fishers in 3.1
One of the complaints heard from the Horde is that they have fewer buyable mounts than the Alliance side, making it intrinsically harder for them to gain the 100 mount achievement. 3.1 will see some steps taken to amend that gap, as the Horde will now be able to purchase a Black Wolf, a White Kodo, and a Black Skeletal Horse. Some Horde are still not satisfied, saying that at least one of those mounts should be Epic to truly equalize numbers, but for now, there's at least more easy mounts to get toward the Red Dragonhawk (Which is honestly a lot cooler looking than the silly blue one Alliance get, seriously).
Cooking and clams get more convenient changes in patch 3.1
The patch notes for the 3.1 PTR have recently been updated, and they have quite a few nice updates and a few things that should make things more convenient for cooks everywhere. We were promised cooking would be easier in 3.1, and these patch notes definitely deliver on that promise. Let's check out the changes (compiled courtesy of MMO-Champion), which include even easier campfires and those 2 promised recipes:
Auriya Testing ongoing on EU PTR
The Ulduar boss Auriya is now up for testing on the EU PTR. This is the first time she's been seen in testing, and WOR and MMO-Champion both have links to live streams, and we've posted one above. Major abilities so far include summoning a swarm of Panther adds that have stacking damage buffs. She has about 3 million HP in 10 mans, about 17 million in 25 mans. Let's see how the raids of Europe do against her. Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.
Breakfast Topic: Patch 3.1? Already?
Okay, maybe Patch 3.1 isn't out yet and probably won't be for a little bit longer. But with the background downloader already active and the official PTR patch notes updated once again, it seems much closer than ever. Testing of the bosses are going pretty smoothly, and it's likely that the public won't get to test the final bosses of Ulduar. That means Blizzard has gotten quite a bit of data about the boss fights, so we're certain to see some differences between the PTRs and when they go live.Kind of puts me in a panic, actually. Patch 3.1 doesn't seem like it's quite ready yet, and even though I know there'll be quite a bit of change from now until it goes live, there are some things in the patch now that don't quite work for me. A number of talents don't quite have the right polish, for one. That said, Blizzard has been working very fast lately so I wouldn't be surprised if all this gets straightened out before the patch goes live. For today, though, let's pretend Patch 3.1 is about to go live. What would you change? What stuff would you still like to see? It looks like an exciting patch, so what are you looking forward to (or dreading) the most?
