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Spiritual Guidance: PTR loot and hymns that will never be seen in game
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. This week, Matt checks out some of the PTR loot along and a suggestion of Hymns that we will never see in game. Have you checked out some of the drops from the PTR yet? There's a great staff from Iron Council that I'm definitely eyeing. I know a lot of spellcasters favour main hands and off hands. I always had a soft spot for staves (because of their looks). But most staves just could not compete with their main hand and off hand counterparts. Rapture will be an upgrade I'll be eyeing. There's also the Ironmender which is an offhand complement for Priests. I haven't seen any spellpower main hands yet but I'm sure there will be some popping up soon enough.
Breakfast Topic: Blizzard's patch 3.1 goals
The blues have been very open lately about the direction that Blizz is taking and the goals that they're trying to achieve. Three, in particular, come to mind when considering patch 3.1 and its effect on tanks and healers in particular: Bring the player, not the class. Healing should be more interactive and interesting. The tanks need to be on par in order to satisfy #1, in terms of performance and stats, yet they do not want to further homogenize the classes. Obviously, Blizzard has not finished making the 3.1 changes, but we can already see the ways in which they are tackling these goals. Druid healing is getting a controversial overhaul, tanks are having their health and armor adjusted, and some tank talents even seem to be creeping across the board. This leaves some bears, for example, feeling like fuzzy, big-butt warriors. How are you feeling so far about the direction Blizzard is taking your main character? Even if it isn't perfect yet, are you excited about what you think your class will look like, or are you worried about your favorite spec/role?
Fishing dailies and other goodies in patch 3.1
The latest build on the Patch 3.1 PTR has introduced a lot of Fishing love to Northrend. The first Fishing-related addition that I noticed personally is the brand new set of daily quests in Dalaran, similar to what we had in Outland. When I bopped around trying to find out what random items you could get as quest rewards this time around, I discovered there's a lot more fishing love than just some quests!El's Extreme Anglin' is always the place to go for Fishing information, and you can bet your patoot that I ended up there in my search. Not only are there new quests, but there's a whole bunch of fun new items to accompany them. Pets, new fishing poles, new lures, new just-for-fun items. Pretty much everything that people love about Fishing in WoW has been cranked up a notch. Artisan fishermen will find that Nat Pagle has a fishing pole for them, too.There have been some achievement changes, and some changes to make fishing a little easier on the eyes and ears. It's really a lot more than I expected for a secondary profession, though I suppose it makes sense given the fanatical nature of the people who actually partake in Fishing. We love this kind of stuff!If you're interested in an early glimpse at the new daily quests, check out our little gallery below. If you want more details on what else is coming our way in Patch 3.1, El's Anglin' has all you need and more.%Gallery-47155%
Patch 3.1 PTR Ulduar/Emblem of Conquest Gear for Warriors
Patch 3.1 is starting to reveal loot from Ulduar bosses as well as items that can be purchased for the new Emblems of Conquest. Thanks to MMO-Champion, we can look at these items and each class will be looking at these items differently. For instance, the new 2h weapons available from 10 and 25 man Ulduar have stats that will be more or less popular for various classes. For warriors, these new weapons may herald the return of Armor Penetration, especially with incoming changes to Deep Wounds and Battle Stance as well as upcoming buffs to armor pen itself. "Armor Penetration Rating: All classes now receive 25% more benefit from Armor Penetration Rating."With all of this in mind, we're looking at a situation where a warrior could pretty easily reduce armor by 10 to 15% depending on spec and stance. (An arms warrior in battle stance would gain 10% actual armor reduction from his tance and around 5% actual armor reduction from his weapon, while a fury warrior dual wielding these weapons could easily reduce armor by 10-11% just from the weapons.) Mix in the effect of a trinket like Grim Toll, and you're looking at nearly 50 to 55% armor reduction during a proc. That's pretty substantial, and it's not even counting the effect of other armor pen on gear.
Does 'bring the player, not the class' apply in PvP?
We've been discussing the whole 'bring the player, not the class' idea, playfully dubbed by Eliah as BTPNTC, and in raids this boils down to a few core abilities or effects that Blizzard feels are mandatory. It was such a powerful statement that it got Eliah's mind doing all sorts of math about it. That said, the same doesn't quite apply to PvP. In Arenas, particularly, some compositions are simply more viable and synergistic than others. Take the incredible cohesion of Rogue-Mage-Priest, which continues to be a powerful comp even in Level 80 Arena play (as seen in the current ESL tournament).When asked the question of whether BTPNTC applies to PvP, as well, Ghostcrawler had a succinct answer: "we're not sure." He explains that the immediate concern is to make all specs equally viable in PvP (read: Arenas), with particular focus on the class specs that have historically been underrepresented. I can tell you right off that that they probably overcompensated with Survival Hunters. With such limited numbers -- twos, threes, and fives -- it's quite unreasonable to think that just any combination of classes and specs will work the same way they do in PvE.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: PvP is calling you home
Zach covered my dereliction yesterday, so let's all peruse his analysis of the warrior changes currently on the PTR. I've tested things on the PTR when and where I could (haven't been on since the new patch, RL difficulties and in game commitments have kept me off) and I've discovered a bug with dual specs that allows a fury warrior to effectively ignore the TG nerf by simply having a second fury spec that doesn't have Titan's Grip in it at all. I'm assuming this will be fixed to unequip your weapons when you switch specs, because if it's not, I know a lot of fury warriors who will pay 1000g to avoid being nerfed. (And yes, I'm wearing leather gloves in that screenshot.)I've been playing in arenas lately with a fully PvE oriented fury build and no resil gear whatsoever. My partner is a prot warrior. We actually win more than we lose, believe it or not, our only significant weak spot being if we hit a team that bursts me down before we can burst their DPS down. If I was to shift three talent points so I could get Heroic Fury and Furious Attacks, we'd probably win a lot more, so once dual specs go live I may go fury/fury instead of fury/prot like I'd originally planned. The fact is, I can count on one hand the amount of times I've not been able to find a tank for runs lately and have had to respec. Heck, I often just tank in my fury spec if it comes to that. So if the future starts to look better for warriors in PvP, I may just focus more on perfecting my fury PvP spec. On the other hand, there's always Arms to consider, especially if it gets more buffs in the future.
Patch 3.1 PTR build 9658 Shaman changes
Sorry for my absence from the website yesterday: I'd like to thank Zach for covering for me as he did. Since hopefully the issues that were preventing my posting have been worked out for the most part I'm here to take a look at the most recent changes to shamans for patch 3.1. So far they're all PvP oriented changes in the enhancement tree, based in part around the upcoming Frozen Power spell. Enhancement Frostbrand Weapon damage has been increased. (From 442 to 530 damage for Rank 9, from 386 to 463 for Rank 8, etc ...) Frozen Power now Increases the damage done by your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Lash and Shock spells by 5/10% on targets afflicted by your Frostbrand Attack effect Flurry now Increases your attack speed by 5/10/15/20/25% for your next 3 swings after dealing a critical strike. (Down from 10/15/20/25/30%) These aren't terribly complicated changes. The change to Frostbrand Weapon is purely aimed at making it more desirable in PvP (since some would forgo the snare if they felt the DPS increase from WF on the main hand makes it more worth their while) - by having Frostbrand do more damage and Frozen Power make your Maelstrom procs and Lava Lash offhand strikes hit harder, the Frostbrand/Frozen Power combination becomes more likely to be used in PvP, which is pretty clearly what is intended.
Live on the Patch 3.1 PTR: Ulduar's Iron Council
Tonight we're pleased to bring you a live stream of the Iron Council as presented by the Area 52 guild Symbolic Logic. You can just click "play" on the widget above to play the stream, or head over to their UStream page to watch it and participate in the chat.We've covered a lot of the patch information lately, and you can take a look at our comprehensive Guide to Patch 3.1. We've also covered the Iron Council fight in particular when the encounter was available on the PTR last week.There was a new build deployed on the PTR tonight, so stay tuned throughout the evening for the latest.Update 8:40 p.m. EST: PTR servers are having problems tonight. No word from Blizzard, but hopefully they'll be up again soon. 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.
Patch 3.1 PTR build 9658 Warrior changes
Matthew's caught up in the tangle of this thing called RL, so don't be surprised to have a different voice going over the Warrior changes this build. Don't worry, though, it looks as though most of the changes this round are aimed squarely at PvP, so I'm covering for him in the meantime. I'd like to call this build the Brown Pants Edition for PvP Warriors. Are you ready? Get a pair of brown pants, because you'll need them.Battle Stance - Increases the armor penetration of all your attacks by 10%.This is a straight up buff, and because Armor Penetration is a better PvP stat now than it is for PvE, this is clearly going to help. Considering armor reduction effects are now percentage-based, this buff is going to help quite a bit. Nothing exciting yet, right? Right. I hope you've got those brown pants on, because the next one is downright insane.Shattering Throw *New Skill* - Throws your weapon at the enemy causing [ 50% of AP + 12 ] damage (based on attack power), reducing the armor on the target by 20% for 10 sec, and removing any invulnerabilities. 25 Rage, 30 yd range, 1.5 sec cast, 5 min cooldownI just had to put that in bold letters and underline it. Aren't you glad I told you to wear brown? Warriors are now one of only two classes that can break a Paladin's Divine Shield or a Mage's Ice Block. It's a baseline ability, which means that all Warriors will have access to it. This improves Warrior viability in a Paladin-dominated Arena environment substantially. It's on the same cooldown as the aforementioned invulnerabilities, as well. This means that every time Paladins or Mages put them up, a Warrior can demolish it. Just in case you missed it -- Shattering Throw also deals damage and reduces armor (and it's likely used when in the armor penetrating Battle Stance!). Not only do you remove their precious invulnerabilities, you spank and strip them, too. That's just naughty.
Patch 3.1 PTR build 9658 Druid changes
As far as druids are concerned, Build 9658 is a Balance build. Sure, there are a few token changes for the other two trees, but Boomkins get by far most of the attention here. I'll get the lesser builds out of the way first: Faerie Fire and Faerie Fire (Feral) now reduces the armor of the target for 5 min. (Up from 40 sec) I am actually really pleased with this. Having my FFF fall off the mobs is simply irritating, and I don't always have space in my rotations to re-apply it. Restoration: Tree of Life mana cost has been changed from 28% of base mana to 13% of base mana. Can't complain about that. On to the main substance of the Druid changes: Balance.
Patch 3.1 PTR build 9658 Death Knight changes
Evidently, this is the build where they noticed that Death Knights could tank competently, and decided to do something about that. Where by "something" I refer to the six seven separate tanking nerfs that have ensued. Oh yeah, and they cut Fallen Crusader in half. Rune of the Fallen Crusader - Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that has a chance to heal you for 3% and increase total Strength by 15% (down from 30%) for 15 sec. I may be too invested in my class - I actually feel physically ill about this. FC was overpowered, yes, but not that overpowered. Frost Howling Blast damage has been doubled (from 259-281 to 518-562 for max rank), cooldown changed from 5 seconds to 10 seconds. So I guess we're meant to obliterate when HB is on cooldown, and just use HB once per rune set? Frost Presence now reduces spell damage taken by 10%. (Down from 15%) This is reasonable on its own. Unfortunately, it gets considerably worse. Guile of Gorefiend now increases damage done by your Blood Strike, Frost Strike, Howling Blast and Obliterate abilities by 5/10/15%. (Old - Critical damage only, 15/30/45%) Simple math: if your crit change is greater than 33%, this is a nerf; otherwise, it's a buff. I'm guessing that means it's a buff for most players. Lichborne doesn't increase the chance of your enemies to miss you anymore. Heyo! Goodbye, defensive cooldown. Update: Ghostcrawler has just posted that Unbreakable Armor is getting the same cooldown doubling that all our other analogous defensive cooldowns got. Awesome.
Patch 3.1 to make Cooking easier
It's being reported that high end Cooking has received a bit of an overhaul in the latest Patch 3.1 PTR build. Well over 20 recipes have been changed so they won't go grey quite so early, making the trip to 450 Cooking a much easier process.The test realms haven't actually come back up yet so I'm unfortunately unable to get a list of recipes that have changed, but it sounds like leveling Cooking will suck much less. I think my it took my Priest longer to hit 450 Cooking than it took my Paladin to hit 450 Blacksmithing. After grinding through that, I never want to make another Feast again. Unfortunately, I'm sure I'll be making them by the dozen when Ulduar rolls around. Sigh.I would do a great many things to be able to summon Jillian on demand.
[UPDATED] Patch 3.1 PTR build 9658 Paladin changes
So the new PTR build dropped, and it doesn't look very pretty for Holy Paladins. Before we get into the grim side of things, it looks like Aura Mastery has been made baseline. Does this mean a new talent will be popping up in the Holy tree? That seems likely, but don't bet on it yet. Now on to the bad stuff...HolySacred Shield - Cannot be on more than one target at any one time.Ouch. So much for raid damage mitigation. Back to single target healing, the lot of you!Infusion of Light - No longer has a chance to reduce the casting time of Holy Light, but increases the the critical chance of your next Holy Light by 10/20% instead. Moved to Tier 10.Double ouch. This seems to be a PvP nerf to me, and others are crying out the same on the forums. Without addressing it directly, Ghostcrawler states that "several of those changes were made for PvE reasons". He was, of course, referring to Sacred Shield, considering that one of Blizzard's concerns was the increasing number of mitigation abilities going into Ulduar. Losing half-a-second Holy Lights will be severely palpable to Holy Paladins in Arenas. [UPDATE: With Aura Mastery's old effect made baseline, the new activated ability talent is all kinds of awesome - Now makes anyone affected by Concentration Aura to be immune to Interrupt and Silence mechanics and increases the effectiveness of all other auras by 100%. Lasts 10 sec. 2 min cooldown. This is a fantastic ability that compensates a little for the other nerfs. Because it is a party or raid-wide buff, this is extremely powerful -- imagine the improved versions of Retribution Aura and Devotion Aura working at 200%. This makes Paladin synergy simply too good. The 2 minute cooldown is about right for PvP, although a 12 second duration might have been more appropriate. It's an excellent talent on paper, I can't wait to see in practice.
[UPDATED] Patch 3.1 PTR build 9658 Warlock changes
A new build went up on the PTRs today, and there's a little bit of good news for Warlocks. Some lingering questions are answered and some fears are put to rest. Most of the changes this patch were to Affliction, so expect more changes to the other trees in later builds. Let's have a look:AfflictionPandemic - Grants the periodic damage from your Corruption and Unstable Affliction spells the ability to critically hit for 100% increased damage.The talent was simplified to enable Corruption and Unstable Affliction to crit, but could have been interpreted as a nerf because spells normally just crit for 50% more damage. The new build should quell those apprehensions. The spell is effectively the same for one point instead of three. That, my friends, is a buff.Malediction - Increases your spell damage by 1/2/3%, and increases the periodic critical strike chance of your Corruption and Unstable Affliction spells by 3/6/9%.With the bonus to Curse of the Elements made baseline, Malediction became a vanilla spell damage increase. The build 9658 version makes it a mandatory talent that will do crazy, sexy things to Affliction DPS. Send some donuts to Irvine. Let's make sure this makes it to the live realms.Eradication - When you deal damage with Corruption, you have 6% chance to increase your spell casting speed by 6/12/20% for 10 sec.This is a reversion and an effective nerf. An earlier build redesigned the talent to increase Shadow Bolt crits, but this change nerfs the talent by forcing players to invest three points (most builds currently put only one) to get the full effect but with a lower proc rate. Hold those donuts.UPDATE: I said before in my last post about the Warlock changes on the PTR that Blizzard seemed intent on removing Immolate from Affliction's rotation by removing all incentive to cast it. I was dead on. In fact, in the current build Immolate now shares the same debuff category as Unstable Affliction. Only one or the other can be up on one target from the same Warlock. Now Affliction Warlocks can't cast Immolate even if they wanted to. Well, they could, but why would they want to? This is a nerf. Unless the damage component of Immolate is compensated through other means, this looks like a DPS drop.
Patch 3.1 PTR build 9658 Priest changes
As I'm sure many of you have heard already, another build has hit the PTR this afternoon. Information on what's contained within is still slowly filtering in, but many of the class changes are already known thanks to Boubouille. Most of the Priest changes are just number tweaks, but there's some good stuff in there for potential Holy Priest PvP viability. Yes, Holy PvP! Let's dig into what we've got.Shadow Shadowform now gives the the periodic damage from your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch spells the ability to critically hit for 100% increased damage.
The Queue: Hard mode is hard
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.Good afternoon, ladies and gents! Before we get started today I just want to thank everyone for participating in my Hawaiian Pizza poll. It was a silly, spur of the moment sort of thing, and it really made my day to see it creep up to around 11,000 votes! Thank you all very much for humoring me.Again, there are a few Ulduar spoilers in this post, but only minor. Be warned. Also, vote Alex.Adrexani asked...This has always puzzled me, Arthas is a Death Knight, Death Knights are dead, yet no where in lore do I see that Arthas died, so did he die or is he still alive?
Retribution should branch out
After admitting that Retribution DPS isn't quite where they want it to be in the current build of Patch 3.1, Ghostcrawler illuminates us a little bit about the direction they wish to take with the spec. He explains that the Retribution tree is one tree where players would go 0/ 0/ 71 if players could (if they put Divine Strength in the Retribution tree, he might even be completely right!). Blizzard would like to increase Retribution's DPS but are looking into making talents in other trees more attractive, essentially forcing the spec to branch out somewhat. This would be akin to how they slimmed down the Warrior's Protection tree, which turned out to be a good thing for the class. He feels that most trees in general are "too thick," making it hard for players to put points in another tree. Hopefully, we'll see some changes in the PTR that should reflect this design direction in the near future.
Watch Ulduar's Hodir live on the Patch 3.1 PTR
Streaming live video by UstreamSymbolic Logic of Area 52 is streaming their live Hodir raid tonight via the Patch 3.1 PTR. 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 last week.
Noblegarden extended to a week on the PTR
Elizabeth's wishes have been answered -- in-game Easter holiday Noblegarden has been extended to a full week according to the calendar on the PTR. That's six more days to run around getting eggs, not to mention doing all of the new Noblegarden achievements being included in the holiday. In the past, Noblegarden hasn't meant that much to players -- the rewards were never that great, and the fact that it was on only one day (a day usually reserved by most celebrating for family dinners away from the game) made it much less active than it could have been. But Blizzard has revamped the holiday, apparently, so be on the lookout for some eggs and bunnies starting on Sunday, April 12th.One quick note for those of you worried about your Violet Proto-drakes: apparently still none of the Nobelgarden quests are included in the meta achievement. So there won't be any Bags of Candy or monthly Brews to get -- just enjoy the festivities.And we'll give a shout-out to Kisirani here as well -- since she took over World Events on the Blizzard team, we've seen some great changes. Despite the issues with the Zombie launch event for Wrath, it was still a ton of fun, and we're pretty sure that she and her team also been behind the popular Brewfest and Hallow's End holidays as well. Excellent work -- we can't wait to see what the new Noblegarden is like.
Retribution DPS too low
Ghostcrawler had one line to say about a flood of complaints from Retribution Paladins who are feeling the pinch of a restrictive tree, effectively ending the argument: Blizzard feels that Retribution DPS, particularly in PvE, is lower than how they would want it in 3.1. This comes in light of the changes in the upcoming patch, which on the surface seems like a good thing because of the slimming down of the tree and freeing up talent points.What many players should understand is that unlike pure DPS trees or even other hybrids, Paladins simply don't have any room to be flexible. Retribution Paladins can pick up every damage-boosting talent already with points to spare, and there's just a DPS ceiling that simply can't be broken through. Whether Ghostcrawler's statement indicates that they'll be reversing the 3.1 nerf to Fanaticism and Righteous Vengeance remains to be seen.
