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Encrypted Text: Vanish on the patch 3.3 PTR
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 talk about the upcoming Vanish fix that is currently on the PTR, and how it stacks up to the hype.From our mouths to Ghostcrawler's ears: we have finally seen the fruits of our continued patience. GC responded to a thread calling for Vanish's swift repair, indicating that there was a change in the works for patch 3.3. This is even earlier than I had hoped we would see it, as I had resigned myself to expecting a fix in Cataclysm via some new mechanical change. The PTR notes indicate that we should have a 1-second immunity to being brought out of stealth after Vanishing. This seems like the ultimate fix and one that's been brought up several times before. It prevents nearly any random effect from removing stealth from us, while still giving our opponents a chance to remove us from the shadows if they act quickly. The question is whether or not these mechanics are working properly, and if we have gained any additional survivability from this fix. I hopped onto the PTR, and with my trust rogue and paladin, I tested the mechanic in full. Read on for the gritty details. Edit: Since this article appeared, the patch notes were edited to reflect a 0.5 second immunity, which coincides with the results seen here.
Lichborne: Death knight leveling 68-80
Welcome to Lichborne, WoW.com's column for all things deathly, knightly, and death knightly. So, death knight. You're through with Outland. You just dinged 68 in Nagrand and want to move on to whiter, snow covered pastures. Maybe those pastures are in Northrend. Maybe those pastures are in Alterac Valley. Either way, let's discuss getting through those final levels and pushing you through to the end game.
Spiritual Guidance: Can Prayer of Mending be improved?
Every week (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 UI and addons blog for WoW. Can the relationship between Prayer of Mending and Power Word: Shield be improved any further? I received an email from a distraught yet dedicated Discipline priest the other day. He's a raiding priest, first of all. So what was he upset over? It's about the interactions between our Power Word: Shield and Prayer of Mending. There are times where a quick PoM hit will land on a shielded player which results in it fading off. Why? Well because the shield has to expire first before the PoM bouncing effect occurs. It's not so bad with Holy priests because the strength of their shields are no match for Discipline shields. It does suck though since the shield just has to wear off before the PoM can shoot off to someone else. Sometimes time just runs out.
Blood Pact: The hidden power of demonology
Each week Dominic Hobbs brings you Blood Pact, the sacred text of summoners, the mantra on the malicious, the effusion of evil and sometimes the diatribe of the diabolical. Sit back in your skull-carved chairs, pop your feet up on the imp, and settle in for this week's installment. "Drawing deep on the power delivered by my demon slave, I hold it in until it fills me completely. I can feel the power wanting to sear my flesh to ash, fire like a thousand suns. More power than I could possibly wield alone, yet too sweet to let go. Before it consumes me I let it flow to those I fight with, torn as if it were my flesh. I know well it will push them further towards achieving my goals." As a pure DPS class we warlocks have one main measure of performance; the damage meter. If we can't perform well there then our place in a group comes into question. Sure, there are times when our big health pools and bigger incoming heals earn us the job of spell-catcher but those jobs are few and far between. Generally with each patch we're looking for the build that maximises our DPS. In Karazhan it was affliction. Somewhere in tier five it became destruction. Wrath made it all a lot more even but flipped it back to affliction and tier eight flopped it to destruction once more. Poor old demonology doesn't seem to get much of a look-in for PvE... or does it?
Scattered Shots: Patch 3.3 - What's on the horizon for hunters
Welcome back to the Scattered Shots. Instead of continuing the So You Want to be a Hunter series, this week I thought it would be good to take a break and review the changes in Patch 3.3. So join me, Eddie "Brigwyn" Carrington from the Hunting Lodge as we explore the ins and out of what's instore for us hunters. Patch 3.3 is on the PTR and as we download the patch we've been busily reviewing the patch notes along with the unofficial information from posted up over on MMO-Champion. Without giving everything away in the first paragraph, let's just say that this is looking to be one awesome patch. Without going on about how good it is, let's take a look at what's being said.From the PTR Patch notes we got to see some insight where Blizzard's development team is taking our class. Hunters Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously. Now I'll admit when I first saw this change I was a bit hesitant. Changing one of core abilities is always disconcerting. But then I started thinking about it a bit more.
Arcane Brilliance: Patch 3.3 PTR changes for mages
It's the weekend, and that means it's time for another edition of Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column where the boys are boys, the girls are girls, and the warlocks are smoking husks that only vaguely resemble the humanoid shapes they once assumed.We're taking a small break this week from our ongoing leveling guide parade. There are some things we need to discuss, you and me. We need to have a talk. Don't worry! It's nothing bad! We're getting a pretty sweet buff, actually. Well, arcane mages are, anyway. We just wanted to discuss it with you, that's all. Oh, we're sorry! Did you think Arcane Brilliance was breaking up with you or something? No, we'd never do that! Arcane Brilliance still thinks you're sexy.See, it's this whole patch 3.3 thing that's happening right now. It's got Arcane Brilliance all hot and bothered. The other columns are too busy to talk to Arcane Brilliance about it. Totem Talk is all excited about "new totems" or some other such nonsense, Lichborne is too busy being overpowered, and Bood Pact... well, you didn't hear it from me but Blood Pact is written by a warlock. I know! Right here at this otherwise reputable website! Also, Blood Pact smells funny. I think it's a gland problem. It's very embarrassing. I shouldn't be telling you this. And Blood Pact drinks its own pee. Okay. That's enough. I'm done now. I've said too much. Keep this to yourself, all right? Loose lips sink ships and all that.Jump on past the break and we'll discuss the patch 3.3 changes for mages.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Lessons from Trial of the Crusader/Grand Crusader
This week The Care and Feeding of Warriors talks about what the latest 10 and 25 man raid can teach you on its highest difficulty setting. Matthew Rossi has gotten his face pushed into the floor a lot this week. It's okay, he probably needed a touch of humbling.So yeah, turns out the plants inside the Crusader's Coliseum taste awful. Must be all those yeti, worms and magnataurs they let traipse around in there.This week, after our usual clear of Trial of the Crusader we got serious in TotGC, as Matt Low tells me is the proper acronym. After some bad experiences we got the Beasts down with minimal fuss, and Jaraxxus took us a night but eventually died. Faction Champions, on the other hand, just stomped on our heads over and over and over and over again. Eventually they went down, and we called it a night exhausted but glad to be done with the whole thing. Why do I mention this?Because one of the things I've come to realize is that I'd gotten soft, or more accurately, I've grown comfortable in a tunnel vision, spam my rotation and shut up world. Whether tanking or DPS, warriors are notable as a class with a purity of focus... pretty much everything we do is physical in nature, with the exception of a few bleeds thrown in... and yet, a pretty widely varied toolbox to pull out. With Icecrown on the horizon and patch 3.3 on the PTR, it seems like a good time to discuss warriors as a general tacklebox.
Totem Talk: 21 to 40 the Shaman way
Totem Talk talks leveling again with a discussion of the changes in 21 to 40 since the last time we discussed it. Matthew Rossi wanted to use this picture sent in by a reader, however. It has nothing at all to do with leveling. but it's a happy shaman with two 171 DPS 2.6 speed mugs. What more can you possibly want? Thanks to Russel Jones for sharing it.I considered doing a big loregeek post this week while waiting for the 3.2.2 changes to continue shaking out for shamans. So far in my experience (raiding as enhance/resto, PvPing as resto/elemental) elemental seems to have had a nice little buff that, while hardly game breaking, helps bring caster shamans closer to other ranged DPS. Didn't really see the point of posting that again, so instead I considered doing a "Famous Shamans of WoW" post that talked about the impact shamans have had on the Warcraft setting for good and ill. I mean, Ner'Zhul alone gives shamans some serious lore cred, not to mention Thrall, Drek'Thar, Nobundo, and even Gul'Dan.But then I remembered that we were talking about me leveling a baby shaman when stuff started hopping again. I got sidetracked leveling in AV, but that's no reason not to start talking about shamans and leveling again.
Encrypted Text: Macro guide for rogues
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 talk about a few of the most common rogue macros in use today.Over the past couple of weeks, I've had the opportunity to play my rogue quite a bit more than I am typically able to. Brewfest and Onyxia have had me busy every night, helping my guild mates slay Coren Direbrew over and over again. I was able to pick up a Direbrew's Shanker 2.0, although it won't see much use, it's still nice to see one in my bank beside the previous versions.I captured this bit of a World of Logs parse from one of the Onyxia attempts, where I was able to my AoE combination macro: it's a very deadly combination. Looking at numbers like these make me wonder if perhaps the great FoK nerf of 3.2.2 wasn't as heavy-handed as it was made up to be. With a Vanish fix on the horizon for patch 3.3 (who's PTR is coming "soon") and the red-hot topic of 'weapon swapping', I decided to do a bit of housecleaning and tidy up my macros and addons in anticipation.
Shifting Perspectives: Leveling 71-80
Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we reach 80. It is not the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.Hail, druids. This week, we're finishing our leveling guide, and after that we're going to be addressing any subject as long as it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with leveling. I'll be revisiting this guide as Cataclysm approaches, as we've already been told that spell and ability ranks are going the way of the dodo, which was really the only depressing announcement from BlizzCon as I was in the middle of formatting and linking hundreds of same.To wrap up the full guide: Why (or why not) to play a druid Getting started and leveling 1-9 Leveling 10-20 (and how to spec) Leveling 21-30 Leveling 31-40 Leveling 41-50 Leveling 51-60 (with bonus video footage of Allison achieving 366 DPS versus a level 79 whelp!) Leveling 61-70 And today's column, leveling 71-80
Lichborne: Emblem of Triumph Gear for Death Knights
Welcome to Lichborne, your look into the issues of the moment for the death knight class. Ah, Emblems of Triumph, the new hotness. Even if you're not running the coliseum, you still have chance to grab them in the heroic daily, and by now, surely most of us have at least had the opportunity to save up enough to buy something. Deciding what to buy, however, is a whole different question. Let's take a look at the badge loot and see what's in it for a death knight.
Spiritual Guidance: I guess we're perfect
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 UI and addons blog for WoW. With no major changes to Priests in 3.2.2, is this an indication that we're fine the way we are? The only thing priests have left to look forward to at this point is patch 3.3. The recent 3.2.2 patch didn't do much for us other than a fun bug involving Power Word: Shield, along with other bug fixes. Shadow priests got a slight bump up in this patch. Healing priests didn't have much to look forward to. This leads me to conclude that from a developer perspective we are okay the way we are. I am hard pressed to find anything really wrong for healing priests. I'm going to hold judgment on shadow priests though since I don't know enough to comment. I'll wait a while before asking around with other shadow priests to get their thoughts.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Arms gearing for beginners
The Care and Feeding of Warriors promised it would discuss Arms gearing for the warrior just hitting 80 three columns ago. Since we covered the changes to warriors in patch 3.2.2 this week already, it seems like a good time to at least try and discuss it now.Let's get this out of the way up front: if every week you're rolling over Trial of the Crusader and Trial of the Grand Crusader heading for A Tribute to Insanity, then this column will be completely wasted on you. It's like bringing coals to Newcastle (not the bitter, the actual town). While my human warrior is geared pretty well by this point, he's a fury/prot warrior most of the time, so the test bed for most of my Arms play is my tauren, who is mainly gearing up via Wintergrasp and various Battlegrounds as well as five man TotC and its heroic counterpart. (As an aside, if someone could explain to me why the Grand Champions and Paletress seem to have forgotten that they have 2H weapons on their loot tables, I'd really appreciate it.)This column will be focused on a general overview of gear specifically for an arms warrior that you can acquire via PvP (not Arena, but Wintergrasp and BG's), reputation grinding, emblem vendors and running TotC 5/heroic 5. There's actually a great deal of easily acquired gear out there to catch up your new arms warrior.
Blood Pact: Warlock guide to surviving Trial of the Crusader, part 2
Every week Blood Pact serves you up a dish of warlock delight. Chock full of juicy chunks of detail, smothered in lashings of class specific tips all topped off with a sprinkling of hundreds and thousands of mage tears.This week I'm rounding off the Trial of the Crusader guide with the last three bosses; Faction Champions, Twin Val'kir and Anub'arak. A more diverse trio of boss fights you will be hard pressed to find. As with last week I aim to bring you the flavor of the fights with some insight into how they look through a warlock's eyes. Again, I'll be linking only a selection of the loot from the overly complex table. This week the Horde drops for normal mode.Faction Champions This will be one of those fights you either love or hate. If you haven't done it before, and don't know what it's all about, then I suggest you have a look through a full strategy; such as those on WoWWiki or Wowhead. There's a huge amount of detail to the fight most of which is pretty irrelevant when you boil it down to your role. If you are leading the fight for the first time then be ready for a headache in assigning everyone their responsibility. If you're not leading then listen to what you need to do and go for it.
Arcane Brilliance: Mage leveling guide: 1-10
Welcome to another installment of Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that thinks nothing goes better with strudel than a warm ball of fire. Ok, so last week, we all clicked the "Create Character" button and selected a mage. We picked a race for that mage, gave him or her facial features, a skin tone, a hairstyle, possibly even a lower jaw, and chose a non-stupid name for our fledgling master of the arcane arts. This week, we're backing our new mage out of the garage and taking him for a spin. Interesting fact: mages actually appreciate in value the more mileage you put on them! The first few levels can be a trying time for a new mage. A couple things you'll notice: You're wearing a skirt and wielding a stick. You're a huge wuss. This can be quite vexing, especially if you're used to another class, possibly one that wears actual armor into battle, doesn't get a nosebleed from standing up too quickly, and isn't the dungeon master for the chess club's Dragonlance campaign. Well get used to it. You may have been on the football team before, sacking the quarterback and dating the head cheerleader, but that was before, when you were a paladin or a warrior or whatever. Now you're Bill Haverchuck. Intelligent and frail, mages are the geeks of the World of Warcraft. We might as well embrace it. We're the nerds, warriors are the jocks, and warlocks are the emo kids. The good news? Someday, they'll all be pumping our gas. At least that's what my guidance counselor always told me. Someday means soon, right? Anyway, the fact remains that mages are wimps at low levels. Rest easy, though. It gets better.
Scattered Shots: So you want to be a Hunter - Part 5 Levels 31-40
Welcome back to the Scattered Shots, So you want to be a Hunter series. This guide is intended to help new Hunters better understand how to play the best class in the game. So join me, Eddie "Brigwyn" Carrington from the Hunting Lodge as we explore the ins and out of how to be a Hunter. Welcome back to the fifth installment of the So You Want to Be a Hunter leveling guide. This week we'll take a journey from 31 through 40. As you journey through these 10 levels you'll have the opportunity to see many of the great vibrant landscapes that will be changed in Cataclysm. Also, if you want you can quest in Dustwallow Marsh and see brave adventurers tackle the revamped Onyxia courtesy of Patch 3.2.2. As every week we'll recap what we have covered up to now. Part 1: We reviewed racials and their impact on the hunter class. Reviewed each of the current races and what the benefits were of each racial. Part 2: We quickly talked about the first nine levels. We also went on to talk about each of the three hunter talent trees and their basic play style. Part 3: Last week we discussed what happened from levels 10 through 20. We also went over the quests to learn how to tame your first pet. Part 4: We covered some of the covered attacks, buffs and spells. We also began looking at how to teach your pet new skills by applying pet talents. With that out of the way, let's mount up and head on out of here.
The Light and How to Swing It: 3.2.2 means re-balancing... again
While I'm not one to whine about incoming nerfs and changes for any of the classes I play, it sometimes gets a little annoying to see the developers tweaking things here and there trying to get the balance just right. Ghostcrawler recently said that in comparison to other classes, "... paladins (all 3 kinds) have been a bigger headache to balance this expansion, usually in the favor of the paladin." While we might not always think this is the case, there are several times since the moment 3.0.2 hit to start the expansion off where things just felt too easy. From ret pallies in substandard gear out performing all other classes to holy pallies being able to chain cast Holy Light with little regard for mana, the class has been a little off at times.
Encrypted Text: Rogue loot guide to patch 3.2.2
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 talk about the new gear (mostly weapons) available in patch 3.2.2 and Brewfest.Much to everyone's surprise, Blizzard released patch 3.2.2 this week. I've talked extensively about what this patch means for Assassination Rogues via the Deadly Poison and Envenom changes, and how hard the loss of Throwing Specialization and a 30% damage cut will be hitting Fan of Knives. With the recently stealth buffs to Volley that snuck their way into the 3.2.2 patch, I am already wondering where Rogues and Hunters will land in PvE after the dust settles. The FoK nerf will hurt some of our AoE-centric PvP builds and compositions, but I don't feel that these strategies had much going for them in the first place besides an obviously overpowered talent.Patch 3.2.2 also brings us Onyxia reborn, completely re-tuned for all of her level 80 glory. This means that she's not only been buffed to challenge level 80 raiders, but her gear has been taken up a notch as well. With ilvl 232 rewards from her 10 man version, and ilvl 245 gear from slaying her with 24 friends, there will be many Rogues foraying into her lair. There are also a few new items available from the Brewfest holiday, one of which surprised even me. Read on for the full details.
Blood Pact: Warlock guide to surviving Trial of the Crusader, part 1
Welcome to Blood Pact , the column for Warlocks that'll get under your skin and fester. You might need some cream for that or if you like I could cauterize it for you. This might sting a little.In the far and frozen north of Icecrown, Highlord Tirion Fordring has had an arena built in order to test the skill of heroes. He is looking to take on the might of Arthas, and what better way to prepare his army than to shut them into a room with some pretty nasty creatures and see if they survive? Well, I guess that's the kind of thinking you get when you put a Paladin in charge.Trial of the Crusader is the latest 10 and 25 man raid instance -- just the place for your modern Warlock to flex his spell book and bag some shiny new loot. With both a Normal and Heroic mode for each size of raid, this instance has a lot of variety despite only having five bosses. I'm going to focus on the Normal mode for now as this is where most of the fights are being held but I'll try and throw in some insight for the Heroic fights as I go along.
Lichborne: Analyzing the latest Patch 3.2.2 PTR changes
Avast ye swabbies! Welcome to Lichborne, where Death Knights rule the Seven Seas and the rest of ye lubbers walk the - Oh. Wait. Talk like a Pirate Day is OVER? Well, dangit. At least I still have this cool buff for a few more hours. These past few weeks have bought a flurry of updates the Patch 3.2.2 PTR servers, and a lot of the updates have a lot to do with Death Knights. Since we were the most changed class in Patch 3.2, it might be expected that we got a good amount of tweaking in 3.2.2 to complement and compensate the Patch 3.2 changes. Thus, it would behoove us to take a look at said changes and see where they'll leave us coming into the likely rapidly approaching patch.
