# Official WoW Cataclysm Thread



## BondExtreme (Aug 21, 2010)

*RELEASE DATE CONFIRMED - December 7th*

This is the place to talk about anything related towards the upcoming, new World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm!

Here we talk can talk about any news updates for the expansion, the two new races, Goblin and Worgen, the changes in the existing zones, brand new zones, class changes, how leveling may change, new dungeons, profession changes, guild perks system, new PvP battlegrounds, new talent tree changes, improved graphical changes and much much more!

Here are the official, general notes on what can be expected in the expansion from WowWiki. Remember that these are general notes. There is a WHOLE LOT more to know coming in the expansion.
* Level cap increased to 85.
* Zones are drastically affected by the Cataclysm in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. The Barrens has been split into two, and is full of canyons of lava. Wetlands is destroyed, Ashenvale hit as well. The Maelstrom churns. The changes will be made available to all players regardless of expansion purchase.
* New race for the Alliance: Worgen.
* New race for the Horde: Goblins.
* New race/class combinations.
* New monsters, quests, and zones.
* New dungeons, raids and battlegrounds.
* Guild advancement system, which includes guild leveling, achievements, and rewards.
* Ability to fly anywhere due to the Azeroth revamp. The blood elf and draenei starting zones will still be instanced.
* New water rendering engine.
* Cataclysm will have support for new DirectX 11 features.
* Cataclysm will have hardware cursor in OpenGL mode.

Here are a few sites dedicated to Cataclysm content on the upcoming expansion. 

MMO Champion - The best news resource for World of Warcraft and new news content released almost every day on the expansion, Cataclysm. 

Wowhead - An amazing website dedicated to WoW with a HUGE database of everything in the game.

WoWWiki - Type in anything Warcraft related and get yourself updated on the lore. 

TotalBiscuit - Otherwise known as The Cynical Brit, this guy has an amazing website dedicated to StarCraft II, World of Warcraft and the upcoming expansion, Cataclysm. It's a podcast but he puts everything on his website and his amazing Youtube channel. Everything he does now is presenting updates for the Cataclysm beta.


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## BondExtreme (Aug 22, 2010)

Ok sorry about the confusion. This thread is back in business.


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## Cja123 (Aug 22, 2010)

This expansion is making me think heavily about getting back into this game. One of the main reasons I left was the community though.. I had a couple of local friends who played with me but once they bounced.. it became very difficult to get groups for instances and level.


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## zithe (Aug 22, 2010)

Cja123 said:


> This expansion is making me think heavily about getting back into this game. One of the main reasons I left was the community though.. I had a couple of local friends who played with me but once they bounced.. it became very difficult to get groups for instances and level.



Blizzard added a random dungeon finder. You queue for a role and a party is built with other people queuing. It mixes a handful of servers (I think it's 8) to make the queue quick. Up until level 80, healer and tank queues are usually less than a minute. DPS queues can be like 20 minutes to an hour sometimes, though.

Once Cataclysm comes out, every one of those websites will be severely outdated and people will have to actually figure stuff out.


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## DannibusX (Aug 22, 2010)

I haven't decided to play Cataclysm yet, knowing that it will suck the life out of me like WoW has for the last 5 years.  I'll probably get it, but take a much more casual approach to the game.


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## BondExtreme (Aug 22, 2010)

zithe said:


> Once Cataclysm comes out, every one of those websites will be severely outdated and people will have to actually figure stuff out.


I severely doubt that.  These websites have been operating regularly for years and have a huge fan base. They can't just quit providing content cold turkey. lol



DannibusX said:


> I haven't decided to play Cataclysm yet, knowing that it will suck the life out of me like WoW has for the last 5 years.  I'll probably get it, but take a much more casual approach to the game.


Yeah I know what you mean. I'm not playing currently but will be going back when it launches. I'll need to play a bit more casual this time around also. This does however look like the most promising expansion. This one has the most added/changed content in it.  I also love it how they are making us go back to the main two continents of Azeroth.


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## Kreij (Aug 22, 2010)

I don't play WoW, but just about everyone I know does. This is a massive update.
Actually it's more of a world re-create than an update from everything that I've read.
Blizzard is going to rake in millions (again) and IMO with changes like these, they deserve it.

@Bond. Thanks


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## zithe (Aug 22, 2010)

Bond Extreme said:


> I severely doubt that.  These websites have been operating regularly for years and have a huge fan base. They can't just quit providing content cold turkey. lol



They're changing zone levels and layouts.  Nothing will be the same. I meant above that the websites will not have any light to shed on multiple subjects for a little bit.

Some of the changes to the city graphics aren't quite to my liking, but they'll grow on me.


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## DannibusX (Aug 22, 2010)

I can guarantee that sites like WoWHead have people in the beta datamining the crap out of it.  Their sites will still be chock full of information the day the expansion launches.


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## BondExtreme (Aug 22, 2010)

^ Oh yes. 

And then there is MMO Champion where the moment a slice of news comes out such as blue posts or new beta builds, it is on the site in a matter of minutes. Blue posts meaning something a Blizzard employee says something about the game basically. 

I actually suggest everyone who is interested in the content to go to MMOC and on the left panel where it says Cataclysm, scroll through that. TONS of beta info right there. Classes, the new guild leveling, new raids, new zones, etc. And of course they have tons of pics too.  Go immerse yourselves in the content. lol


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## Reventon (Aug 23, 2010)

WoW is the greatest game ever but I haven't been on in like 3 weeks.


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## AlienIsGOD (Aug 23, 2010)

I'm subbed for this thread.  My and my warrior can't wait for Cataclysm


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## BondExtreme (Aug 23, 2010)

*News Update*

All credit goes toward MMO Champion.

New Stone Drakes as well as Drakes of the Wind mounts!

Stone Drakes Video
Drakes of the Wind Video

Drakes of the Wind picture.
Stone Drakes picture.

Btw, I will be doing a lot of these updates on here ;D


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## BondExtreme (Aug 25, 2010)

*News Update*

All credit goes toward MMO Champion.

"Throne of the Four Winds - Skywall Raid Instance

Let's post something new today! The Throne of the Four Winds is the raid instance in Skywall, the elemental plane of Air. It will feature 2 encounters: 
* A fight against the "Conclave of Wind", a Djinn council. (The Djinn model in the game files is the one used by Siamat)
* A fight against Al'akir, the Elemental Lord of Air. (No models yet)

The instance looks similar to the Vortex Pinnacle, the 5-man dungeon of Skywall and players will move between platforms with their flying mounts."

Raid screenshots.
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Blue Posts

*Hunter*

*Volley removed*
I know I'm going to regret posting in this thread again, but I think it's the right thing to do so I'll take one for the team. 

We think Multi-Shot is a more interesting ability and can fill the hunter AE niche (along with Explosive Trap). We'll have to change Multi-Shot from the current version to get it there. I'm very sorry if for some unusual reason Volley was your favorite spell as a hunter. We've been trying to consolidate abilities and free up some bar space and having multiple AEs that competed with each other seems like a good area to hit up. The Volley and Multi-Shot niches were very similar, which resulted in the latter being dead. We wanted to pick one and we though Multi-Shot felt more huntery and less "clunky" (to use a favorite Wow forums term).

Do consider that you won't be AE'ing yourselves through Cataclysm content the way you do currently. When you do need to AE, hunters will have the tools to do so. In situations where you do have to AE, you are probably not also trying to CC. When you're back to the level of trivializing lower level content, nobody is going to say "Don't bring a hunter. Their AE spam isn't spammy enough." We don't consider easily breaking rogues out of stealth a good reason to keep Volley around.

I think that hits most of the reasonable concerns. I care much less about addressing the unreasonable ones. 

As always, those of you whose sole contribution is to post very inane or derogatory things will be banned.

Man, have we come a long way from "AE is only for trash."

*Paladin*

*One Man Army*
Yes. Many of the problems we've had with Ret are of the "one man army" category, where a paladin can do a lot of damage, then go defensive and heal themselves up. We love the kit of the paladin who can heal as well as do damage, but it needs to be tightly controlled. Word of Glory gives us that control. We have the room to make the spell really powerful because we know its on a tight cooldown and you sacrifice dps to use it. We can't do that today with say Flash of Light, because once you can cast one strong FoL, you can cast a bunch of them until you go OOM (at which point you Judge or Divine Plea, and you're going again). Similarly, we can make Selfless Healer nearly overpowered because you can't use it on yourself and because even with it you're not going to out compete a Holy paladin in healing. If you can occasionally contribute to group healing in tight spots, then that's great. That's some utility you can provide. (Note: Don't oversell this as "I'll get brought to raids because of my healing.")

*Class balance and RNG*
That's the wrong view to take though. The equivalent would be "I'm balanced around getting a crit every swing, so when that doesn't happen, RNG screws me." You get a Templar's Verdict every 3 Crusader Strikes. Sometimes you get lucky and need fewer. You of course need to pay attention for when that happens and be able to react to it and alter your immediate plans. That right there is the element we think is most missing from today's Ret paladin. 

*Words of Glory*
Those numbers don't have to be the same though. The new talent tree design affords us a lot more flexibility in that regard. Part of the reason Word of Glory is so useful to Holy is because it costs no mana. Ret doesn't really care about mana, because it comes and goes easily, but a Ret generally won't be able to sit there and queue up several Holy Lights in a row. They will be able to sometimes use a Word of Glory though.

New World of Warcraft Fan Wallpaper by Kenvd.

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## AlienIsGOD (Aug 25, 2010)

Thanx for the yummy pics and info, I'd rather come to this thread instead of going to MMO Champ, just because I like TPU better :O


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## Hvale2k5 (Aug 25, 2010)

Im afraid to get back in to wow lol.... it really destroy my first two year in college, DAMN WOW YOUR SCARY! love the game tho, i wish i'm rich so i can play this all day


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## BondExtreme (Aug 25, 2010)

Hvale2k5 said:


> Im afraid to get back in to wow lol.... it really destroy my first two year in college, DAMN WOW YOUR SCARY! love the game tho, i wish i'm rich so i can play this all day



Unfortunately with games we need to consider time management. lol
Do homework first even if it means you can't get on for the day.


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## zithe (Aug 25, 2010)

Bond Extreme said:


> *News Update*
> 
> All credit goes toward MMO Champion.
> 
> ...



Looks like that temple in storm peaks. I hope it's not a pain like occulus is.


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## Delta6326 (Aug 25, 2010)

i may go back and try WoW played it for long time, but i always play private server(don't shoot me)


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## BondExtreme (Aug 26, 2010)

*Mini News Update*

All credit goes to MMO Champion.

*BlizzCon 2010 World of Warcraft & StarCraft II In-Game Items*
The Blizzcon 2010 Pet is another Murloc to add to your collection! Will try to get a better picture when the shiny little murloc appears in my game files.

Blue Post:

"Death will rise from the tide!" Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain once warned -- and at BlizzCon 2010, the band's dire musical prophecy will finally come to pass. Everyone who attends this year's BlizzCon or purchases the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket will receive an exclusive set of murlocalyptic in-game items for World of Warcraft and StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. World of Warcraft players will be joined by Deathy, a murloc companion decked out as Deathwing and doing his best to strike fear into the hearts of Azeroth's crustacean population. You'll also be able to display your tidal pride in StarCraft II with a Murloc Marine character portrait and a pair of deep-sea decals to emblazon on your units, each with a different terran, protoss, and zerg design.

BlizzCon 2010 takes place on October 22 and 23 at the Anaheim Convention Center. For further details or to order the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket, visit www.BlizzCon.com.







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## 1Kurgan1 (Aug 26, 2010)

zithe said:


> Looks like that temple in storm peaks. I hope it's not a pain like occulus is.



You won't ever see an Occulus again, they have said it's completely apparent to them that people don't like instances like that where you are just mounted.


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## BondExtreme (Aug 26, 2010)

*News Update*

All credit goes to MMO Champion.

Baradin Hold Preview

Baradin Hold is the new PvP Raid Instance in Tol Barad. Just like the Vault of Archavon in Wintergrasp, the instance will only be available to the faction controlling the zone and according to the current layout of the map, Blizzard will most likely add more wings over time. 

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Raid Map

Article Destination Here you can also view updated beta images for Azshara. You can also view an Azshara Q&A by the developers.


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## ShiBDiB (Aug 26, 2010)

whens this release? im really tempted to go back jus cause I could use a game to keep me occupied when the weathers shitty this winter


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## AlienIsGOD (Aug 26, 2010)

I hope its b4 Xmas... it WOULD make sense as they (Blizzard) could take in a whole whack of $$$ over the holiday season, as they somewhat did with WOTLK coming out in Nov of 08

I dont see the big problem with Occulus.  Easy instance with a bit of flying, but only 1 boss that you do in mounted combat. IMO its better than 5m TOC.  Horse mounted combat..... no thats stupid


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## BondExtreme (Aug 27, 2010)

*Important!*

BlizzCon 2010 Promo

Blizz just released this quick trailer for Blizzcon in October. 

Also @ShiBDiB. I am assuming at Blizzcon they will be announcing the release date. I am almost 100% sure of that if they don't do it before then.  But basically any day now they can announce the release date for the game.


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## Kreij (Aug 27, 2010)

Hmmmm ... The title of the thread says "Official", but it's not TPU sanctioned. Maybe Bond needs an infraction for taking liberties with the title name. 

Naaah ... This thread will get epic views and posts when Cat' hits the markets.
I keep an eye on it just to keep up to date so I can talk semi-intelligent to my friends who play WoW.

Nice job, Bond. Keep the updates incoming


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## BondExtreme (Aug 27, 2010)

*News Update*

*Dual-Specialization Price Reduced*
The price of Dual-Specialization has been lowered in a recent beta build, it now costs 100 gold and new players who reach level 40 should be able to afford it without too much problem. 






*Character Selection Screen - Built-In Theorycraft*
In Cataclysm, the character screen will let you check easily how much of stat you need to be capped, calculations for Expertise, Hit Rating, and a few other stats are available. This will probably save you a lot of time when you try to figure out if you really need that extra hit on your shiny new epic. 





*Build 12804 - Mount Hyjal Update*
Mount Hyjal received a very interesting update in the latest beta build. If you visited the zone or looked at screenshots during early beta, you probably remember the huge crater called Archimonde's Vengeance. Well, this subzone is gone and has been replaced with a greatly improved version! The crater is no longer there but the key NPCs of the questlines are still around. 

*Before*
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*After*
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Kreij said:


> Hmmmm ... The title of the thread says "Official", but it's not TPU sanctioned. Maybe Bond needs an infraction for taking liberties with the title name.



Hehe. I'm just that cool. ;D Nah.


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## AlienIsGOD (Aug 27, 2010)

OMG that theorycraft is exactly what is needed.


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## ctrain (Aug 28, 2010)

one thing that bothers me is that everything but terrain seems to cast shadows.

it would be pretty great if the shadows would move as the day / night cycled in game.


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## BondExtreme (Aug 28, 2010)

ctrain said:


> one thing that bothers me is that everything but terrain seems to cast shadows.
> 
> it would be pretty great if the shadows would move as the day / night cycled in game.



I believe they do already. :/


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## BondExtreme (Aug 28, 2010)

*News Update*

*Bastion of Twilight - Build 12803 Preview*
Bastion of Twilight will be one of the first raid instance of the expansion.

*Encounters*
There are 4 encounters in Bastion of Twilight, plus an additional Heroic-Only encounter.
*Valiona and Theralion
*Halfus Wyrmbreaker
*Twilight Ascendant Council (Ignacious, Feludius, Arion, and Terrastra)
*Cho'gall
*Lady Sinestra (Heroic Only)

*Zone Screenshots*
The screenshots of the zones are without NPCs or doodads, this isn't representative of the final instance, just a preview of the architecture. Obviously a subzone like the Throne of Apocalypse is more impressive when Cho'gall is here sitting on his huge throne. 
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*UI Addon Functionality Returning*
Blue Posts

With the release of the next beta patch, we plan to re-enable the ability for players to use third-party addons. Many of the core user interface features are now implemented in the beta test and functional, so we feel it’s a good time to open up the field for developing and testing UI modifications.

Be sure to continue leaving us feedback about all of the new user interface features here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...66722&sid=2000

Feedback about the new guild interface can be provided to us here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...66721&sid=2000

We Are Legendary - Retroactive!
We are making a exception for this guild achievement. Any legendary items you have already earned will count. 

New content for the next Beta Patch
We do not plan to patch today, though we plan to have a great deal of new content in the upcoming patch. You'll get access to new zones and dungeons, and potentially an increase in level cap to 85.

*Druid*
*Feral Q&A*

Can you make savage roar undispellable?
This is something we're discussing, but haven't made a decision yet.

Will Shred ever have no positional? : \
We like Shred and Backstab with positional requirements. We haven't changed our stance on this. If you find Shred too difficult to use in PvE, then Mangle. If you're not happy in PvE with the damage you can do while Mangling, and can't manage to stay in a position where you can Shred, then I hate to say it but this probably isn't the spec for you. In PvP we think it's more of an issue, but we've also buffed Mangle to where you can do credible damage with it. 

Will dash be given the same treatment as sprint? (lower CD lower dura)
We think Dash is fine. 

Is the new version of innervate intended to be worth less to specs with small mana pools like Feral?
Yes, exactly. In Cataclysm, healer mana matters a great deal. In that environment, having some dps who can prop up healer mana so well is quite overpowered. It's okay to have utility in providing the healers extra mana, but it can't get out of control. Balance and Resto druids will have bigger Innervates, but then they are also balanced around needing to use those on themselves most of the time. 

Can you change the new version of survival instincts to have less of an effect but a shorter CD?, 60% is great, but at a 5 min cd, id rather have 40% on a 3 minute cd or something to that effect ya know? 
This is the kind of thing we're still messing with. There are situations where the short cooldown weaker version is more useful and others where it isn't. 

Is Bear form damage going to be a little bit higher then it currently is for Cata? can pulverize and mangle at least hit harder then maul? its kinda lame that our talented abilities hit much weaker then maul in bear atm 
I wouldn't worry too much about numbers yet. We haven't made much of an effort to adjust them and won't until we're happy with the basic mechanics. 

What is the purpose of thorns? you've been consolidating weird buffs so, i figure this is on the list of weird buffs with no real purpose
We think it has more of a purpose with more damage packed into a smaller window than weak damage available 100% of the time. In the latter case you'd never think twice about attacking someone with Thorns because it's never not there. It also asks a little more of the druid to use Thorns at the right time rather than just whenever the buff drops off. Thorns isn't a raid buff on the scale of something like Fortitude or Bloodlust so we see no reason to consolidate it. 

*Paladin*

*Crusader Strike*
I see this comment a lot, but I don't understand it. Can you explain to me why a 4.4 Crusader Strike is not strictly better than a 4.5 Crusader Strike? That might be the case if your rotation was so jam packed that you can't fit in another Crusader Strike until its cooldown drops by an entire 1.5 global cooldown, but we've gone on record saying that the rotation won't work that way. Hitting Crusader Strike even a fraction of a second sooner means a Templar's Verdict comes that sooner, letting you start the rotation again. That's a dps increase.

Haste is valuable above and beyond the Sanctity of Battle talent of course. Swinging more often is a dps increase alone, and can also lead to more frequent Art of War procs or Seal ticks.

Templar's Verdict at less than 3 stacks will almost never make sense unless you're in a situation where perhaps someone is running away (and for whatever reason you can't stun them etc.) so you might as well hit them now. 

*Priest*

*Lightwell Feedback Needed*
While any kind of feedback is helpful to a degree, we are much more interested in the feedback of players who have tried Lightwell in the most recent beta builds than those who just never cared for the talent. We are actively making changes to the spell to see how it plays, so it's important for us to know if the changes are noticeable and fun without that feedback getting buried under the cruft of bad reputation that Lightwell has built up over time. If it's still not cutting it, we're prepared to try something different, but we need a chance to see if that is in fact the case.


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## BondExtreme (Aug 30, 2010)

*News Update*

*Goblin Mount - Goblin Trikes*

Someone pointed out in a mail that the only screenshots of the Goblin mount I posted on the front page were awful, and he was right. As far as we know, the Goblin racial mount will be a Trike and just like any racial mount, the Goblin Trike Key and Goblin Turbo-Trike will be usable by all races. 

Nothing about the Worgen mount for the moment. (I know you're going to ask)

*Goblin Trike*
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*Goblin Turbo-Trike*
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*Exciting talent trees so far - Blue Posts*

There was another thread on this topic that kind of turned into the "DK neglect" thread, so I thought I would start a new one on the original topic.

We're interested in opinions on which current Cataclysm talent trees you find the most exciting.
Ground rules:

1) It isn't of much use to us if you like a talent tree because of one particular ability. That tells us little about the talent tree as a whole.

2) Likewise, your opinion won't count as much (in our minds anyway) if you like a talent tree just because it has all the talents you wish *your* class had. In that same vein, this is probably one case where you're more objective when you find that you like your own talent tree rather than just being all wistful about someone else's toys.

3) Please try and stick to the talent trees themselves and not use this thread for your laundry list of ideas to improve your class.

4) Brevity is the soul of wit.

Another way to think about this: Which classes benefited the most (in the sense of coolness, not necessarily raw power) from the talent overhaul?

[...]

Is it equally valid to discuss the opposite of this? As in, what talent trees you feel haven't really been changed at all, or received close to no benefit really of the overall as it's been so far? 

The feedback is useful to a degree. The problem is it's really common to see something like "I'm disappointed with my tree. All the other class got a lot of amazing toys and new talents that I really think should be in my tree. All the other classes are incredibly excited about Cataclysm, while the people who play my class are all drunk in the gutter with despair. My tree has changed the least of all the trees and will clearly be terrible in Cataclysm." That kind of thing tends to be a cross between the grass is greener mentality and just campaigning for buffs. If you think you can be really objective about it, then go ahead, but my concern was that we'd get a lot of "My tree is the worst" feedback, which isn't useful when everyone says that about their tree. Ultimately, it's easier for us to make changes when we know what excites you rather than knowing that you want to be buffed (because we can pretty much assume the latter). 

Dispellable Buffs

Many buffs can be dispelled because they are magical effects and because it's strategic to do so. Some buffs can't be dispelled either because it doesn't make sense, because the class couldn't function without the buff, or both. Slice and Dice can't be dispelled, but Savage Roar and Inquisition can be. We might decide to make or all or none of them dispellable. We really need to see more end-game PvP to make that determination.

Reforging useful stats

It's a matter of degree. Some players will reforge for a sub 1% dps gain, and that's their prerogative. We don't think the stats need to be that close, but they need to be somewhat close. If Ret paladins perfer crit to haste (or Enhacement prefer haste to mastery, etc. etc.) then that's okay so long as crit doesn't provide twice the dps per stat point as haste. If you're willing to take a previous tier's gear because the stat budget is more optimal, then we've got a problem, as we had a few times in the LK content.

Breaking crowd controls with melee AE

This is a consideration for many players though. A Prot warrior can't just merrily Thunder Clap no matter what -- they have to evaluate their surroundings, decide if it's appropriate to move slightly farther away, or if they just need to forgo their AE attack for the time being. If Crusader Strike constantly cleaved everything, then that would be really annoying. Having to sometimes drop a 15 sec cooldown ability out of your rotation (assuming you can't move or anything) shouldn't be that big a deal. There are no fights that I can remember off the top of my head where you need to keep a target CC'd in the middle of the melee for long periods of time, and if there are any, they are fairly rare. You should be thankful for the opportunity to sometimes respond to your surroundings by doing different things rather than always mashing the same buttons like you are dashing out a song on a piano. 

Class Roles

You guys worry way too much about what buckets you're supposed to be in. It seems every time I come to the forums, I am asked to define someone's role. 

In PvE, the only roles are tank, dps and healing. In PvP, the only roles are dps and healing (except for very specific circumstances like tanking Drek in AV). Situationally you might be called upon to carry a flag or defend a tower, but that's what you're doing at the moment, not what your talent spec is all about. There are 30 talent trees. They're all a little different. PvP doesn't have positions like quarterback, grenadier, left fielder, drum major or striker. Use all of the abilities you have in order to support your allies and be successful. If you're a Ret paladin, you should focus on melee dps, because that's where your strongest abilities lie.

Sometimes when I do try and explain how we think a spec should work, I often regret it. I'll say something like how Ret is supposed to be a melee dps class, and keep getting asked "Then why do we have heals?" or "Why should someone take me over a rogue if I'm just melee?" Trying too hard to label things is always going to result in a simplistic answer.

I'm not trying to dismiss the question. It's just not the way we think about things.

*Death Knight*

Death Knights neglected in Cata?

"Neglect" is one of those words that typically makes developers roll their eyes and skip over to the next post. Just so you know. 

Even the original DK trees are not very old compared to all the others, so in that sense, they didn't have so many layers of build up cruft that needed shaking off. We've changed up some of the mechanics that weren't working and got rid of some of the boring passive damage, but overall we didn't feel the need to replace talents like say Rime, Dirge or Killing Machine.

I'm just saying that it shouldn't come as much surprise that the most recently designed tree didn't need as much overhauling as say warrior and mage, which hadn't changed much since vanilla. 

*Druid*

Can't use Shred on unusual raid encounters (Kologarn)

When we make an entire instance full of Kologarns then it will be a problem. I think you'll be fine if you can't manage maximum dps on every raid boss. I think the game loses far more when we can't make original bosses with unusual mechanics that we gain by having every dps spec do about the same relative damage on every fight. 

Shred position prereq

PvP is rarely ever decided by someone's long term sustained dps though. It has a lot more to do with making the right decision at the right time.

In PvE there is no question that Shred is superior, but in most fights you can Shred. Those few fights where you can't Shred aren't ubiquitous enough to feel like a big deal. If you just find it too difficult to always get behind a creature to be able to Shred, then I'm not sure what to tell you. We don't think this problem is so widespread that Ferals are at a huge disadvantage overall. We agree that Feral has a really high skill cap in Lich King, but that's more do to the John Madden nature of the rotation than to Shred's positional requirement, and it's also something we've taken steps to improve in Cataclysm.

Many specs can't perform their highest 100% potential when mobs are moving or when they have to step out of the fire, but we aren't about to change those in order to make things easier on the player. I think raiding is plenty easy to be honest, unless you're talking about the more challenging heroic-mode encounters in which, yeah, we're asking you to step it up a little.

Innervate

Innervate is now based on YOUR mana, not the target's mana. GC specifically stated this makes Innervate useless for Ferals, as they do not want Ferals helping Healers in their mana management. 

That's not actually what I said. I said that we wanted Feral's Innervate to be less powerful than Balance and Restoration, because we don't want "stack Ferals" to be the solution for healers who overheal a lot. Your Innervate will still be valued (probably more valued, all things considered), but it won't be and shouldn't be the magic pill that gets you a raid slot.

*Hunter*

New Multi-Shot

Our current version of Multi-Shot has not target cap. It's a little like Fan of Knives.

*Paladin*

Seal Damage

There's no evidence of that though. You're just fretting. We nerfed Seal damage recently because Ret paladins were beating everyone on damage meters. We aren't spending much effort on numbers yet, but we need them to be reasonable enough so that playtesters don't do unusual things that they wouldn't do when the numbers are tuned more accurately.

Holy Power on white attacks?

Holy Power on white attacks was too unpredictable to the point of annoying. Imagine you have 2 Holy Power, start to push Crusader Strike and then at that instant get a white attack proc. Now you have wasted your 1.5 sec GCD *and* wasted Holy Power because you're technically at 4 now. Having Holy Power tied to yellow attacks is at least the kind of thing you can train yourself to watch out for. If you aren't hitting any buttons, then you aren't going to get Holy Power for example. You can notice after every button mash if you got that extra proc or not -- they aren't just happening out of the blue. 

Stacking haste for fast Templar Verdicts

If hitting TV after 23 seconds qualifies as burst, then I think we'll be fine. Yes, once in awhile a Ret might get off a 32K Templar's Verdict, but that's not going to global anyone. 

[...] Haste for most melee grants them more resources. Ret still isn't super dependent on mana though. It will be limiting enough that you can't spam heals or expensive spells like Consecrate, but it won't be so attractive that if we incorporated a haste to mana mechanic that it would at all be attractive.

Haste for casters makes their spells cast faster, but again you're doing so little of that that it won't be something you really need.

So neither of those mechanics works for Ret paladins. You'll get more damage from autoattacks of course, but so do the other melee. Tying haste to Crusader Strike cooldown is more consistent with the "haste lets you do more" model for the other melee. (There are no general mechanics that let haste lower the cooldown of something, so you're technically inaccurate in that sense.)

Finally, we could have just made the haste affects Crusader Strike cooldown a core mechanic. We made it a talent because we found in playtesting that some players liked CS at a predictable 4.5 sec cooldown and others appreciated having the cooldown come faster with haste.

Interesting Rotations

"Interesting" is in the eye of the beholder, so that's sort of a hard point to argue. We do think it's more complex though. Part of the problem is it's rather difficult for anyone to screw up the Ret rotation on live. If you hit things when they come off cooldown, you'll do pretty competitive damage. You have no resource to worry about and it's pretty hard to throw your rotation off for very long.

The change to Holy Power and adding spells like Inquisition and Zealotry means there is a lot more to juggle. If you let Inquisition fall or you aren't prepared to maximize Zealotry uptime, then you aren't playing to your full potential. If you don't hit TV when you get 3 Holy Power, or if you religiously hit TV but eclipse buttons like Judgement in the meantime, then you're not playing optimally.

Basically we are now engineering opportunities for players to make a mistake. If nobody can make a mistake, then there really is no test of skill and no opportunity for anyone to get better. That's the "faceroll" rep that the tree sometimes gets saddled with -- no matter what you do, you'll end up doing high damage. In Cataclysm, that won't be the case.

If you find you can master the new rotation trivially, then congratulations, you'll be one of the better paladins out there. I am very confident however that not everyone will be able to do so, and so Ret paladins who do a lot of damage will get more respect for being good players than for having picked the right class on the character select screen.

Retribution Rotation

Imagine you did nothing but Crusader Strike and Templar's Verdict. With no haste, you can do a Templar's Verdict every 13.5 seconds. With enough haste to lower Crusader Strike to 4.4 seconds, you can do a Templar's Verdict every 13.2 seconds. In the space in between Crusader Strikes you will be able to Judge and use Holy Wrath and sometimes get Exorcism procs. You might also use free cycles for utility abilities depending on the situation. But your rotation should never be so full that every Crusader Strike must land every 4.5 sec or its wasted. It might be wasted sometimes, but not so often that Sanctity of Battle is an unattractive talent. (Source)

[...] I'm going to leave out the Exorcisms, because they aren't predictable.

Here is a 4.5 cooldown:

0s: Crusader Strike (back at 4.5)
1.5: Judgement (back at 9.5)
3.0: Holy Wrath (back at 18)
4.5: Crusader Strike (back at 9)
6.0: (Hopefully Exorcism)
7.5:
9.0: Crusader Strike (back at 13.5)
10.5: Inquisition (back at 40.5)
12.0: Judgement (back at 20)
13.5: Crusader Strike (back at 18)
15.0: (Hopefully Exorcism)
16.5:
18.0: Crusader Strike (back at 22.5)
19.5: Holy Wrath (back at 34.5)
21.0: Judgement (back at 29)
22.5: Crusader Strike (back at 27)
24.0: Templar's Verdict
25.5:
27.0: Crusader Strike (back at 31.5)
28.5:
29.0: Judgement (back at 37)

Here is a 4.2 cooldown:

0s: Crusader Strike (back at 4.2)
1.5: Judgement (back at 9.5)
3.0: Holy Wrath (back at 18)
4.5: Crusader Strike (back at 8.7)
6.0: (Hopefully Exorcism)
7.5:
8.7: Crusader Strike (back at 12.9)
10.2: Inquisition (back 40.2)
11.7: Judgement (back at 19.7)
13.2: Crusader Strike (back at 17.4)
15.7: (Hopefully Exorcism)
17.2:
17.4 : Crusader Strike (back at 21.6)
18.9: Holy Wrath (back at 33.9)
20.4: Judgement (back at 28.4)
21.9: Crusader Strike (back at 26.3)
23.4: Templar's Verdict

Like Snozberries, I did that math quickly so I may have screwed up somewhere, but assuming I did not, your hardest hitting ability is available 0.6 sec earlier. Not a huge dps increase overtime, but probably comparable to an equivalent amount of crit rating (given that this is not the only haste benefit).

*Priest*

Lightwell Range

15 yards.

Lightwell vs. Health Stones

Healthstones are good and good players use them. If bad players continue to ignore Lightwell, we can live with that. If it becomes as useful as a Healthstone, perfect.

Also note that ignoring a Healthstone (or Lightwell) will be essentially like casting a mana drain on your healer, which is not the case today.

*Article Destination*


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## BondExtreme (Sep 1, 2010)

*News Update *

This is short and sweet but YES!!

*Heroic Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines Available at Launch*

Blue Post

Heroic Shadowfang Keep and Heroic Deadmines WILL be released with Cataclysm. You will not have to wait for a later patch.

*Article Destination*


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## BondExtreme (Sep 10, 2010)

Sorry haven't been up to par with the updates. Anyway.

*HUGE UPDATE*

Basically this update is amazingly big so I will just give you a summary and link you to the article. 

*Cataclysm Beta - Build 12942*

*New WoWTal build*

*New Titles*

*New Guild Achievements*

*New Player Achievements*

*Tier 11 Set Bonuses*

*Maelstrom World Map*

*Spell Diffs*

Take a look! Very interesting stuff! 
Article Destination


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## BondExtreme (Sep 11, 2010)

*News Update*

Ok.. This is yet another huge post so I will summarize and link you. 

*Cataclysm Beta - Build 12942 Hunter Pet Changes*

*Cataclysm Beta - Build 12942 Death Knight Pet Changes*

*Golden King Video Preview*

*How Archaeology works*

*Random Character Services Buttons*

*New Flight Skill*

*Battleground Titles and Achievements*

*Tons of Blue Posts*

*Player vs. Player*

*Guild Leveling / Perks*

*Cataclysm Zone Q&A: Ashenvale*

Enjoy! Article Destination


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## Easo (Sep 11, 2010)

Nice, nice, though i read all of this on teh mmochamp, still thank you.


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## BondExtreme (Sep 12, 2010)

*News Update*

*Patch 4.0.1 now on Test Realms*

These patch notes are obviously not done yet.  It's a start though. The release date must be getting closer now. 

Article Destination


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## v12dock (Sep 12, 2010)

Patch 4.0.1 runs like a champ on max setting.. Bravo blizzard you did a good job optimizing your game. And the new streaming feature is really nice


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## BondExtreme (Sep 12, 2010)

v12dock said:


> Patch 4.0.1 runs like a champ on max setting.. Bravo blizzard you did a good job optimizing your game. And the new streaming feature is really nice



Ack! You got in? I hate you! LOL  j/k

Also you have two GPU's. I hope it would run smoothly. 

I myself am planning on building a new computer in a month or so before the game comes out. Trying to figure out the GPU situation though :/ Can't decide on which on what to do. I will most likely be purchasing an ATI card. ($400 budget) So I am thinking if I should just get a 5870 right now or just wait and see if the 6k series comes out this fall. 

One thing is for sure though. When I go back to this game, I want it to run flawlessly  I need it to with all the recording I will be doing for the Youtube channel, XtremeGamingPresents. 

Any ideas guys for the GPU? Thx


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## v12dock (Sep 12, 2010)

Actually my 4850x2 just died.. : /  So i'm back to using my 9800gt


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## BondExtreme (Sep 12, 2010)

Oh. Sorry to hear that.  
Are you planning on purchasing a new card before the game releases?


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## v12dock (Sep 12, 2010)

Who knows.. maybe a gtx 460


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## 1Kurgan1 (Sep 12, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> Ack! You got in? I hate you! LOL  j/k
> 
> Also you have two GPU's. I hope it would run smoothly.
> 
> ...



Eh, even with dual GPU's, I havent played in a few weeks, but with DX11 on before I could play with everything maxed except, reduced input lag. Like that running around the Worgen starting area I would mostly cruise around at 60 fps, but it could dip into the 40's sometimes, reduced input lag standing still I was at 60fps, but the instant I even moved, 15fps... 

What I observed back then was, if you want to use dual videocard to their peak, you will need a monster CPU. My 6 core at the bone stock 2.8ghz puts my 2x 5850's to 99% usage, but at 3.5ghz, WoW was only pushing them to about 65% use, meaning my 6 core was a bottleneck... LOL


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## v12dock (Sep 13, 2010)

No wonder the game plays so well on Mac, two 6 core Xeons... lol


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## 1Kurgan1 (Sep 13, 2010)

v12dock said:


> No wonder the game plays so well on Mac, two 6 core Xeons... lol



Who's Mac? I mean that would be an exception to the rule, as 99.9% of Mac's don't have that kind of power.

But yes that setup should play it great. Here's my take on the performance I was getting. WoW right now is setup to put most of it's stress on the CPU, and that is because, lets say you walk up to Best Buy, or Dell, or anywhere else, almost any comp you walk out the door with will have a good processor and a horrible videocard. So by making it CPU intensive it is the safest bet for people with store bought computers.

The issue with that is, now they are enabling dual videocard support and DX11, they had already been running into these optimization issues with Dalaran, even I only get about 15 fps there currently. And now they are allowing videocards to push some more weight, but seems it's still heavily leaning on the CPU, so it's really crushing both the CPU and the GPU's, where as if they tweak the high end settings more, those should be hitting the GPU's, not the CPU, I'm not sure if I will be playing again before Cata comes out, so I won't be able to say how much optimization of the new engine they have done, but if I do play some more, I will let you all know.


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## BondExtreme (Sep 13, 2010)

Yeah. With my new build, I am planning on getting the 1090t and hopefully oc it to 4. Then the game should never have frame issues below 60 with a good video card


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## 1Kurgan1 (Sep 13, 2010)

Get the 1055t, on air or water it clocks almost exactly the same. I run my 1055t at 3.9ghz on the factory AMD heatsink, they clock very easily.

But as far as FPS, I wouldn't count on anything, optimization is usually the last thing that Blizz worries about when setting up the high end options. I mean wtf, 15fps in dala on my setup is very aggrivating, but my old 720BE and 4870x2 got 15fps, and before that my PI 9850 and 2x 3870's also got 15fps, seems no matter the syste, if you run the max settings that that system is capable of, 15fps.


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## AlienIsGOD (Sep 13, 2010)

Im not sure i'll be rocking 2 vid cards when Cata comes out...Gonna wait till Xmas and hopefully get a HD5800 card of some flavour.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Sep 13, 2010)

If you pick up a 5850 you should be good for very close to max settings, or max, hard to say how well it is optimized until I see some raid content or heavily population in a capital, which I don't think any of that has been really done yet on the Beta Server.


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## v12dock (Sep 13, 2010)

I ALWAYS play in windowed mode so duel video cards is worthless for me


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## Easo (Sep 13, 2010)

v12dock said:


> I ALWAYS play in windowed mode so duel video cards is worthless for me



It eats more performance in almost every game  WoW included.


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## BondExtreme (Sep 13, 2010)

*News Update*

Cataclysm has potential of releasing on November 2nd! This is however not final. 

*Gathering professions now give XP*
This is an intentional change, however the values may not be final. Tradeskill nodes are intended to give you experience when you loot them.

*Bastion of Twilight - Twilight Ascendant Council*
Image1

*Mimiron's Head/Invincible in 4.0*
Ghostcrawler's stated idea to make such things really low drop rates is still a real possibility. Whether or not this change will take effect with patch 4.0.1 is to be determined.

*Flying in Azeroth*
Flying in Azeroth will not be possible until your account is upgraded to Cataclysm. Patch 4.0.1 is slated to be released prior to Cataclysm and will not include the changes to the old world or any content exclusive to Cataclysm. This patch will apply many systems, class, and user interface changes. It's very similar in nature to the major patches which preceded the releases of The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King.

*Raid/Dungeons Content Difficulty*
You are correct that a lot of players moan about things being too easy without having seen the content personally. We definitely place less emphasis on their feedback than on people who have actually tried those encounters.

The hardest encounters of LK were harder than anything we've offered before. And honestly, that point isn't often in contention. I think what surprised players is say how far they got in Naxxramas on their very first night, without a lot of planning or gearing, or how they managed to kill 2-3 heroic bosses on their first night of a new heroic wing being opened in Icecrown (though to be honest, fighting a boss for weeks on normal mode first definitely exacerbates that phenomenon).

We'll continue to offer some content for the cutting-edge progression raider. There is an encounter in Bastion of Twilight for them. But we also think true pugs shouldn't be stumbling their way through encounters they've never seen before, at least without a very strong or experienced leader.

To use my own guild as an example, in say the Serpentshrine days, we'd take a few weeks to master a new boss. I could probably count the number of time we got two new bosses on one night. I think a progression rate like that feels better to a lot of players. You spend time in between raid nights discussing what you could do differently on a tough boss, but then celebrate each victory.

A heroic dungeon doesn't need to be quite so brutal, but it still doesn't seem bad if you wipe on a new boss 2-3 times before you figure out a solid stragegy and everything falls into place. A lot of players love that puzzle-solving aspect of the encounters. It lets them exercise their mind, creativity and knowledge of game mechanics. When you can just overpower the boss and ignore the encounter mechanics, then a lot of that is lost.

*Class balance on PTRs*
Most likely not. We'll be evaluating the way players are performing in content on the 4.0.1 test realms, but keep in mind the class changes are balanced around level 85 gameplay. It's almost more likely we'd end up taking away the Icecrown Citadel buff (I'm only saying this is a possibility), as in many cases healing, tanking, and damage dealing may stand to benefit a lot from these changes at level 80.

Things will be a little bit interesting since these changes are being applied while players are still actively working through the current Wrath of the Lich King content. Bear with us and provide as much feedback as you can about your experiences with these changes under the current content, but keep in perspective that the new class design is meant to be balanced around the upcoming Cataclysm content. We're more interested in ironing out bugs and polishing the systems than attempting to balance them intricately for level 80 gameplay.

*Using all your healing spells*
This is a very common line of argument we see from players, especially healers. It runs something like "I use all my heals. I seem to be a pretty good healer. Therefore only using a few heals makes you a bad healer." It should make you a bad healer (if our numbers are appropriate) but often it does not. Often those 1-2 spells can take you 90% of the way there and the additional heals used my more savvy players only adds 10% or so optimization on top of that. You might have been a better paladin for using all of your toolbox, but the fact is that even very mediocre paladins could heal just fine using only those two buttons. That's not what we are going for. If you're used to using a variety of spells, then this change won't affect you much.

*Making healing more challenging*
We see the sentiment expressed often that making healing more challenging might drive players away. That is a risk, but the flip side is that making healing more engaging might attract some players who find it boring today.

While it has always been a goal to make World of Warcraft approachable to a lot of different kinds of players, including those who found traditional MMOs too hardcore, we'd rather retain players because the gameplay is fun than because the gameplay is easy.

Taking your argument to a probably illogical conclusion, if we made healing even easier, we might get even more players to heal. Is that really good for the game as a whole though?

*Lack of healers in the Dungeon Finder in Cataclysm?*
Players played WoW for six years without Dungeon Finder though. Dungeon Finder is awesome, don't get me wrong, and I spent a lot of time personally working on it. But the intent is not to be able farm dungeons as fast as you possibly can.

Healing (and tanking as well) isn't for everyone. It takes the right kind of mindset. I know there are players who want to make healing and tanking super easy in an attempt to adjust the ratios of dps to tanking and healing. There are also some who just want to get rid of the healing role completely.

None of those are our goals though. We want to make healing fun for healers, not make healing so easy that anyone can jump in without any fear of failure.

I remember looking for Scholomance or Shadow Labs pugs for literally 2-3 hours. There is almost no chance of that ever happening again now that we have Dungeon Finder, even if tanking and healing require a little more finesse.

So to answer your question, I think having more healers available at any cost is bad for the game. We want healing to be fun for people who like healing. If that means the mages and rouges have to wait 15 minutes for Dungeon Finder instead of 5 minutes, I think we can live with that. If nothing else, fast Dungeon Finder queues (or ease in finding a raid slot, etc.) remain attractive benefits of tanking and healing.

*Paladin*
*70% spell pushback*
_Hopefully they just make the 70% baseline for everyone with no pushback with earth shield or concentration aura type spells. Spell pushback is one of those things that can really drive you crazy in both PvP and PvE._
We did. We just changed the base pushback resistance so that we didn't have to duplicate the same passive bonus in every tree. 

*Tanking / Crusader Strike*
_If CS and HotR are meant to be single/multi-target counterparts, then they should both hit as the same type of damage. Since CS is stuck as physical due to Ret using it, HotR should probably be switched to physical as well. Mana cost of HotR seems lower than it should be, compared to CS._
We want Prot paladins to be able to swap between Shield of the Righteous and Inquisition when going from single-target to AE tanking. One of the mechanics that lets that work is Hammer of the Righteous being improved by Holy damage.

Crusader Strike should win handily against single targets. If it's not doing that yet it's just a numbers adjustment, so you'd be better off testing as if it were the case rather than trying to build a rotation based around something that you know we're likely to change.

Article Destination


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## 1Kurgan1 (Sep 13, 2010)

It's nice to read that they see what they did wrong with Naxx, and that that mistake won't happen again. I'm not against some easier content, but I also want stuff that people have issues with, and allows great guilds to separate themselves from the rest. I don't know if my dream about great blues returning will ever happen though, but I can hope. I hate seeing everything as epic, I remember ZG having some amazing blues, and even using the old UBRS ring for a long time, or the Blackhands trink, would be nice to see some variety and some great blues again, rather than everyone just being completely epic'd out.



v12dock said:


> I ALWAYS play in windowed mode so duel video cards is worthless for me



I'm assuming you run dual monitors? If not, should play fullscreen, the desktop don't need to be sucking all of that power.


----------



## BondExtreme (Sep 13, 2010)

They are are actually implementing windowed full screen mode into Blizzard games now which is AWESOME! And I am pretty sure it acts like full screen mode as far as power usage goes..


----------



## DannibusX (Sep 13, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> *Using all your healing spells*
> This is a very common line of argument we see from players, especially healers. It runs something like "I use all my heals. I seem to be a pretty good healer. Therefore only using a few heals makes you a bad healer." It should make you a bad healer (if our numbers are appropriate) but often it does not. Often those 1-2 spells can take you 90% of the way there and the additional heals used my more savvy players only adds 10% or so optimization on top of that. You might have been a better paladin for using all of your toolbox, but the fact is that even very mediocre paladins could heal just fine using only those two buttons. That's not what we are going for. If you're used to using a variety of spells, then this change won't affect you much.



I try to use all of my spells, or at least a large variety of them when I heal.  The CoH cooldown in BC wasn't a nerf in my book.  It just showed who the bad priests were.



BondExtreme said:


> *Making healing more challenging*
> We see the sentiment expressed often that making healing more challenging might drive players away. That is a risk, but the flip side is that making healing more engaging might attract some players who find it boring today.
> 
> While it has always been a goal to make World of Warcraft approachable to a lot of different kinds of players, including those who found traditional MMOs too hardcore, we'd rather retain players because the gameplay is fun than because the gameplay is easy.
> ...



This.  Healing is incredibly easy and boring, sans retards.  I'm all for making it more challenging.  The more I read about the upcoming expansion, the more I want to buy it.


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## BondExtreme (Sep 14, 2010)

DannibusX said:


> I try to use all of my spells, or at least a large variety of them when I heal.  The CoH cooldown in BC wasn't a nerf in my book.  It just showed who the bad priests were.
> 
> 
> 
> This.  Healing is incredibly easy and boring, sans retards.  I'm all for making it more challenging.  The more I read about the upcoming expansion, the more I want to buy it.



Everything you just said took all the words right out of me. 
I am a priest myself and found it very easy in the Lich King expansion. All of these beta dungeon walk through videos are making me very excited because they show how intensive the fights are and the damage everyone takes. Us holy priest's are going to own healing with chakra!


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## 1Kurgan1 (Sep 14, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> They are are actually implementing windowed full screen mode into Blizzard games now which is AWESOME! And I am pretty sure it acts like full screen mode as far as power usage goes..



They've had windowed fullscreen mode for a long time, but as far as I know it still doesn't use dual videocards, and I'm pretty sure it still does the whole desktop thing, as it alt tabs out way faster than if you have it running regular full screen.


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## animal007uk (Sep 14, 2010)

Sorry havent been keeping up with much news, Did they add suport for dual GPU's now then, and suport for more than 2 cpu threads?

At the moment wow does not officialy support crossfire or SLI and only realy makes use of dual core cpu's altho i read you can force it to detect more than 2 cores but you won't see any real performace gains, so did they change it in cat?

They also need to hurry up and release it lol im getting bored shitless with wotlk.

@1Kurgan1 oops diden't see you mention the dual card thing in your last post lol.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Sep 14, 2010)

Yeah, the game does support multiple GPU's now and more than 2 CPU cores, but the CPU is still a massive bottleneck, even with my 6 core, my CPU is bottlenecking...


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## animal007uk (Sep 14, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Yeah, the game does support multiple GPU's now and more than 2 CPU cores, but the CPU is still a massive bottleneck, even with my 6 core, my CPU is bottlenecking...



yup even the blue panda's say the same, dosent seem to matter what cpu you have, seems to be more about the mhz. i see a few fps more if i bump my cpu up a bit more from 2800mhz to 3000mhz but its minimal so i don't bother.

When you say the game now suports 2 GPU's do you meen cataclysm?. (sorry should have mentioned that in my post) i ask because as it is now the blue panda's are still saying sli/crossfire is still not official suported in the current wotlk addon and patches.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Sep 14, 2010)

Yeah I mean Cata, currently it doesn't use 2 cards. I'm sure with the current setup mhz is a massive factory for the wotlk client, because it is limited to using only 2 cores, and most people have 2, so the only thing beyond that is raising the speed. But I'm sure that the more cores the better (comparing to its own kind, like PII 2 core < PII 3 Core < PII 4 Core < PII 6 Core), but that means very bad news for anyone running even a quad, and if your running a dual core, you might as well turn off your second card as the scaling between the cards will be less performance than a single card. That is unless they change the game from being so graphically intensive, I just wish they would come out with 2 clients, like LotRO has, one low end one high end, would make the game run much better for everyone and allow them to optimize much better for all setups.


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## animal007uk (Sep 14, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> I just wish they would come out with 2 clients, like LotRO has, one low end one high end, would make the game run much better for everyone and allow them to optimize much better for all setups.



I have had this in my head for a long time but there is no way they would do it i don't think, Its a shame  i also with they would fix the crappy shadows no matter what card you have on max settings it kills fps big time.

Its odd to, i see so many people moaning about there high end rigs or even people with the same graphics card as me yet i personly dont seem to have any problems with fps to the point where the game is unplayable.

1600/1200 res / 4xAA / everthing on max apart from shadows, game sticks at 60fps in almost every place and in dalaran 45fps minimum most the time, It has droped to 25 but as i don't spend much time in dalaran it realy dosen't bother me.

You are right tho they should realy make a client to support the higher end users.


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## BondExtreme (Sep 14, 2010)

Meh. The game just has a sucky engine imo. Game launched in late 2004 so it's old and all they are pretty much customizing it now. It reminds me of Crysis or GTA4 on the PC. The engines just required too much.

Anyway when did they add the full screen windowed mode into WoW? I left this past February and never noticed it in the settings. :/


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## animal007uk (Sep 14, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> Meh. The game just has a sucky engine imo. Game launched in late 2004 so it's old and all they are pretty much customizing it now. It reminds me of Crysis or GTA4 on the PC. The engines just required too much.
> 
> Anyway when did they add the full screen windowed mode into WoW? I left this past February and never noticed it in the settings. :/



No idea don't use it, I just hit the windows key lol.


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## W1zzard (Sep 14, 2010)

animal007uk said:


> now the blue panda's are still saying sli/crossfire is still not official suported in the current wotlk addon and patches



i have wow in my vga reviews now and it does scale, but not as much as other titles, and obviously no scaling if you are cpu limited.


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## animal007uk (Sep 14, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> i have wow in my vga reviews now and it does scale, but not as much as other titles, and obviously no scaling if you are cpu limited.



I think this is what the panda's mean, All they said was it might scale or it might not, But its not officially supported.

Some people see a small diffrence but some have lower frames per second.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Sep 15, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> Meh. The game just has a sucky engine imo. Game launched in late 2004 so it's old and all they are pretty much customizing it now. It reminds me of Crysis or GTA4 on the PC. The engines just required too much.
> 
> Anyway when did they add the full screen windowed mode into WoW? I left this past February and never noticed it in the settings. :/



As far as I know they have had the option for a long time, I havent used windows mode since like 08 and I had been using that feature way back then.

I do agree it's a crappy engine, but theres a reason, and it's because they keep tacking on features, and not optimizing it. When WoW launched, it ran fantastic, I had a 9800 Pro back then, then a x850 Pro, both top end cards and it murdered the game. But I also had a friend with a lowly Geforce 2 (low end one) and he played it great. BC came along, more features, but no optimization for it, and since the game was CPU dependent, it really just fubared things, then WotLK and more of the same. I use to love Blizzard, but it's a company that is after pure money now, the game runs like crap on low end and high end system, and a few people get lucky and it works great. 

It's nice to see they are redoing the engine, I just hope to see better optimization than what I have already seen in the beta, because if thats as good as it gets, people are going to need monster CPU's.



W1zzard said:


> i have wow in my vga reviews now and it does scale, but not as much as other titles, and obviously no scaling if you are cpu limited.



Isn't everything CPU limited since the game currently only uses 2 cores? That is if you are in a stressful area.


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## Kenshai (Sep 15, 2010)

Just got a Beta invite today, if you guys have any specific questions I'll try and figure them out for you.

It does have a slightly updated engine and will run some dx11. At least that's what I've heard from one of my friends that got in beta before I did. I'm still downloading all the data for it, but can get in and play. My characters are still being transferred and the premades are taking a suggested 11 hours.


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## W1zzard (Sep 15, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Isn't everything CPU limited since the game currently only uses 2 cores? That is if you are in a stressful area.



if it were you wouldn't see any difference in fps between the slowest and the fastest card


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## 1Kurgan1 (Sep 15, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> if it were you wouldn't see any difference in fps between the slowest and the fastest card



I have got about the same performance with the game running 1920x1200 max everything (except reduce input lag) while using a PI 9850 + 2x 3870's, PII 720 BE + 4870x2, and my current setup PII 1055T + 2x 5850s. I'm sure open world the systems have varied performance, but in stressful areas (where it matters), all of them have performed like crap compared to what they should do.

Just tested my setup, max GPU usage I can get from my 5850's with my 6 core at 3.5ghz is 54% usage :/ So CPU bottlenecked, very sad.


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## BondExtreme (Sep 15, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> As far as I know they have had the option for a long time, I havent used windows mode since like 08 and I had been using that feature way back then.
> 
> I do agree it's a crappy engine, but theres a reason, and it's because they keep tacking on features, and not optimizing it. When WoW launched, it ran fantastic, I had a 9800 Pro back then, then a x850 Pro, both top end cards and it murdered the game. But I also had a friend with a lowly Geforce 2 (low end one) and he played it great. BC came along, more features, but no optimization for it, and since the game was CPU dependent, it really just fubared things, then WotLK and more of the same. I use to love Blizzard, but it's a company that is after pure money now, the game runs like crap on low end and high end system, and a few people get lucky and it works great.



First off I honestly have never seen the option for that. And I mean it literally never was an option for me.  Though back when I did play the game, I was running Vista so who knows. I am thankfully running Win 7 now but I doubt it has to do with the OS.

Also it was patch 3.0 that ruined the engine in terms of bottlenecking and extreme CPU dependency. I remember that when I had my old 2006 laptop, it could run the game on the highest settings and run a constant 40-60+ frames. When 3.0 was released, my laptop couldn't handle it even at medium settings. After a week it was too much for the GPU in the laptop thus destroying the gpu in there.  Now this was two years ago so I had to build a new gaming desktop PC. And this is my current PC I am using now. I fitted it with a GTX 260 and the Q6600 CPU at 3.0Ghz. Even with these settings even at ultra I get only about 30 frames or less in game and about 5-15 frames in cities..... I was so mad at Blizz with how they added all this junk in the engine in 3.0. It's almost like you need a $3000 computer now to have an amazing experience with the game on ultra settings. And all you needed on max settings before 3.0 was about a $600 computer


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## zithe (Sep 15, 2010)

My cpu tops out at 25%-30% usage (never maxing cores), my dual core topped at 70%. My vga is always at 100% when any sort of activity pops up.


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## v12dock (Sep 15, 2010)

I play windowed mode because I multitask to much, and would be super bored if just sitting around in Dalaran. Thank God for facebook...


----------



## BondExtreme (Sep 15, 2010)

*News Update*

Another big update.

*Cataclysm Currency Changes Explained*
As we discussed in our previous announcement (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...Id=24401796793), we're refining the currency systems used for purchasing PvE and PvP items in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and the transition to this new system will take place in two stages. Today, we're going into more detail on how these changes will be rolled out, so if you haven't yet, make sure to check out the prior article to get up to speed on the currency names.

One change of note since that original announcement is that we've changed the name of the low-tier PvE currency from Hero Points to Justice Points. The original announcement post has been updated to reflect this.

*Out With the Old*
In the upcoming 4.0 patch we'll begin the first stage of the conversion to the new currencies. Emblems of Triumph and Emblems of Frost will be converted into Justice Points. For this initial conversion there will be a soft cap of points you can have, with a hard cap enforced later as detailed below. All PvE emblems and badges below Frost and Triumph will be converted into gold. This even includes legacy badges, like Badges of Justice. If any of these older currencies are converted into gold, the player will receive it through an in-game letter.

At this time any bosses a player defeats that are level-appropriate to them (and previously awarded badges or emblems upon defeat) will award them with the new Justice Points. Similarly, any items that previously cost emblems or badges of any type will now cost Justice Points instead.

On the PvP side, Season 8 will end with the release of patch 4.0, and all Arena Points, Honor Points, any leftover Battleground Marks of Honor, Stone Keeper's Shards, Venture Coins, and Spirit Shards will be converted into the new Honor Points. The new Honor Point pool will also have a soft cap for these conversions, but a hard cap will be enforced later. At the time of conversion, items that previously cost Honor or Arena Points will be sold in exchange for the new Honor Points. Rated Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds won't be available again until Season 9 (shortly after the release of Cataclysm), when they can be entered to win the higher-tier PvP Conquest Points.

In addition, purchasing any item with these secondary currencies (Honor Points and Justice Points) will now require that the purchaser meet the item's minimum level requirement.

It's important to note that these conversions are not 1:1, but are indicative of the level and relative worth of each before the conversion to the new point systems. For example, Stone Keeper's Shards will convert into more Honor Points than Spirit Shards.

*Tip of the Cap*
While we previously announced that there's a limit to the amount of these new currencies you can stockpile, we're providing a grace period in the form of a soft cap. This soft cap will allow the initial conversion to push the amount owned over the cap, but will not allow any further points to be earned (or returned through item refunds) until enough points are spent to put you below the hard cap.

For instance, a player has 3000 Emblems of Triumph, and 1200 Emblems of Frost; at the time of conversion they'll be given 4200 Justice Points. The hard cap for Justice Points is 4000, so that player won't be able to earn any more Justice Points until he or she spends enough points to reduce the total to under 4000. This also applies to the new PvP Honor Points, which also have a cap of 4000.

Shortly before Cataclysm is released, another patch will enforce the hard cap, marking the second stage of the currency conversion. Any Justice or Honor Points above the hard cap will be converted to gold, and just like in the first stage of the conversion, the player will receive an in-game letter explaining that some of their currencies were converted into gold as well as delivering the gold itself.

Article Destination

*Archaeology Rewards and Previews, Blue Posts* 

Now to look at some of the items and rewards you can obtain from archaeology or how the profession works, please visit the article I will put down below.

*More blue posts*

*AQ20 is a 10-player raid in Cataclysm*
AQ20 has been converted to a 10 player raid.

*Reforging on 4.0.1 PTRs*
We've been creating a lot of builds lately for 4.0.1 and Cataclysm beta, so Reforging NPCs may not yet be available. As with all PTR processes, the patch notes are not comprehensive. Some changes may not be reflected in the notes, while others may not yet be available in the current build.

If Reforging is not yet active, it should be in an upcoming build. We want to give players a chance to try out the new feature. With all of the class changes going in, Reforging will allow players the opportunity to customize their gear a bit more before Cataclysm actually ships. It will also allow you to add Mastery to existing items if you so choose. 

*World Changes / New Race and Class combinations in Patch 4.0.1*
The world will not be changing in patch 4.0.1. We are planning to apply those changes in patch 4.0.3 shortly before Cataclysm launch. 

[...] New race/class combinations and changes to the old world (including quests) should be patch 4.0.3. I know it's kind of confusing since we typically release one major patch right before the release of the next expansion. In this case, many of the systems changes will be added in 4.0.1, while a lot of content changes will be added in 4.0.3.

The expansion will then provide players with access to the new races, new zones, level 85 cap, flight in Azeroth, Archaeology, etc.

*Reduced XP from 70 to 80*
This is still a possibility, but it's probably not something we're going to do immediately with the release of Cataclysm.

*Guild XP for boss kills*
Guild xp for boss kills is scaled on a few factors.

- Boss level
- Normal / Heroic
- Amount of guild members present (more xp for raids, since they are limited to once a week)

Hope this helps.


*Spamming cheap heals in Cataclysm*
_Right now on the Beta videos a lot of the healers seem to be spamming the weak "Heal" for 90% of the time. So spamming is ok and we are expected to spam for most of the fight as long as what we're spamming is a weak spell? is this truly what is intended for Cata healers?_
No, that's not the intent. We made those heals very cheap so that healers wouldn't be in constant terror of running out of mana. We also are making the normal modes easier than the heroic modes. You'll have to pair the right heal for the right situation to a greater degree in heroic modes. I think part of what you're seeing is that healers are using the base heal because they can get away with it. It's also possible that in our effort to distinguish them from the more expensive heals that we made the base heals too cheap or efficient. 

*Mage*
*Arcane Mastery*
_According to Kavan on EJ, this theory of aiming to maintain your mana above some percentage is wrong anyways. If there was a magical percentage, it would be 40% because the idea is to gradually ramp up your cycle's mps as you get closer and closer to using evocation. What matters is the time at which your evocation comes off cooldown, not some magical percentage point at which mastery becomes more or less effective._
I think that's more accurate. Generally speaking, the approach is something along the lines of...

Evocation and mana gem are available at the start so you burn some mana quickly, use gem and dps cooldowns, burn more down to 40%, evoc back to 100%, play conservatively until mana cooldowns are available, burn more, then come back up and play conservatively, then nearing the end of the fight you try to time your burn down once again to match the end of the fight. 

_I like arcane mastery because it adds some depth to an otherwise shallow spec. It changes the way I play mid encounter in a controlled way as opposed to stupid stuff like hot streak where I just hope for the best. I will be making some mistakes (none as dumb as waiting until 20% mana to evocate or using arcane missiles every time it's up LULZ), gradually over time I'll get bored and look into / math out minor details and make fewer/smaller mistakes._
Yeah, that. My gut says it'll be very hard for players to perfectly optimize their fights since optimal behavior will be different from fight to fight and further vary based on mastery level, but most players will (hopefully) be able to use general guidelines to get reasonable results from the spec.

*Warrior*
*Slam Scaling*
It's not important to keep Slam scaling with haste so long as Arms scales with haste. It's only a problem if you'd get to the point of dropping Slam from your rotation or something, which we think is unlikely. We'll make sure Heroic Strike never eclipses Slam. Heroic Strike isn't supposed to be a button you're ever excited about pushing at the expense of something else. It's just there so the rage doesn't go to waste.

*Blood Frenzy*
That Blood Frenzy changes lets us give Arms as much rage as needed from haste to make sure that haste is valuable from the resource-generation side. It's already valuable from the damage side -- it is not the case that increasing haste is a dps loss for Arms. I realize you might have made this post before mine in the beta forum. The challenge of communicating in two places at once.

*Arms Rotation*
The Arms rotation is Rend, Colossus Smash, Mortal Strike and Slam, with Overpower and additional Colossus Smash procs, and Heroic Strike as a rage dump.

Article Destination


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## v12dock (Sep 15, 2010)

For instance, a player has 3000 Emblems of Triumph, and 1200 Emblems of Frost

Rofl, someone in my guild ( Back in may ) Had 350 Frost


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Sep 15, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> First off I honestly have never seen the option for that. And I mean it literally never was an option for me.  Though back when I did play the game, I was running Vista so who knows. I am thankfully running Win 7 now but I doubt it has to do with the OS.
> 
> Also it was patch 3.0 that ruined the engine in terms of bottlenecking and extreme CPU dependency. I remember that when I had my old 2006 laptop, it could run the game on the highest settings and run a constant 40-60+ frames. When 3.0 was released, my laptop couldn't handle it even at medium settings. After a week it was too much for the GPU in the laptop thus destroying the gpu in there.  Now this was two years ago so I had to build a new gaming desktop PC. And this is my current PC I am using now. I fitted it with a GTX 260 and the Q6600 CPU at 3.0Ghz. Even with these settings even at ultra I get only about 30 frames or less in game and about 5-15 frames in cities..... I was so mad at Blizz with how they added all this junk in the engine in 3.0. It's almost like you need a $3000 computer now to have an amazing experience with the game on ultra settings. And all you needed on max settings before 3.0 was about a $600 computer



That setting is just called "maximize" rather than fullscreen, but its the check box right under Windowed Mode, and it does get rid of the start bar and all, for me at least.

Also, yeah 3.0 was a big hammer, 2.0 added a bit of stress and I seen some crappy performance in BC, but nothing that compares to Dala crap.


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## BondExtreme (Sep 15, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> That setting is just called "maximize" rather than fullscreen, but its the check box right under Windowed Mode, and it does get rid of the start bar and all, for me at least.



You know what. Maybe it was the maximized button that I never checked.. I never noticed somehow.  Weird.

I do HOWEVER know that they will be changing that in Cataclysm to the three options, Windowed, Fullscreen or Windowed (Fullscreen).


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## v12dock (Sep 16, 2010)

There is a nice exploit out there for the PTR. Delete your base-enUS.MPQ file in your World of Warcraft Public Test\Data\enUS folder. This will load all cataclysm maps, but kalamdor crashes when you load it.


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## BondExtreme (Sep 17, 2010)

*News Update*

*The Battle for Gilneas Battleground Preview*

Article Destination

Very nice looking battleground. Also has the same concept of Arathi Basin. Capture points to obtain enough resources to win the game.

*First part of patch 4.0.1 is now available through background downloader!* 

Can't believe they are already releasing some of the patch already. This however does not mean the patch will be active once the download is complete. Just means you can start downloading data for it so you won't have to download the entire patch in one day.


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## Divide Overflow (Sep 21, 2010)

And you'd best get this thing before patch day, whenever that will be.
4 GB can take a while to get across Blizzard's download system.


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## BondExtreme (Sep 22, 2010)

*News Update*

Ugh. So sorry guys. Have had computer issues the past week and over that time there have been too many updates to really go over. I will just go over some big ones. 

Vial of the Sands - Alchemy Mount?

*Pre-Cataclysm World Event on PTRs*

*Brewfest is Here*

*A lot of Blue Posts*

*Small Tier 11 Preview*

*Peacebloom Vs. Ghouls (Plants Vs. Zombies)*

*Horde Guild Mount - Scorpion / Kron'Kar Annihilator*

*Female Worgens Models on Beta*

*Running Wild - No Worgen Mounts*

*And a lot more!*

Please view all of these on the MMO-Champion homepage.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Sep 22, 2010)

lol, running wild is awesome right now, let me see if I can find the vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R84OrJN0_Q


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## BondExtreme (Sep 22, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> lol, running wild is awesome right now, let me see if I can find the vid.
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R84OrJN0_Q



LOL yeah I saw that. Haha!

*News Update*

*"Return to Graveyard" Button* This is the best thing Blizzard implemented into the game so far! lol

*Halls of Origination Video Preview by TotalBiscuit*
Image1
Image2
Image3
Video

*Hunter Pet Skills Update*

*Hillsbrad / Alterac Mountains in Cataclysm - Updated Screenshots*

*Beta - Heroic Dungeons Now Available*

*Gear scaling in Cataclysm*

*A lot more blue posts*

Read all this here!


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## BondExtreme (Sep 26, 2010)

*News Update*

*Warlock Tier 11*

*Talent Calculator Update*

*World Map Update*

*Achievements*

*Spell Changes*

*Patch 4.0.1 Stage 3 available on Background Downloader*

*Cataclysm Heroic Instances and Lost City of the Tol'vir videos*

*Tol Barad Focus Test w/ Devs*

*Blue Posts*

*Guild Leveling - 25-Man Raids Achievements*
We just made a change to all of the old 25 player raids that allows guild achievements to be completed as if they were a 10 player raid. This means you will only need 8/10 instead of 20/25.

*Raids & Dungeons - Dungeon Finder average iLVL*
The built-in Blizzard number is an average of the best piece of gear in every slot. It counts equipped gear as well as your bags and banks. It is meant as a general measurement of whether you're capable of handling a dungeon or not, and shouldn't be taken too seriously as a measurement of awesomeness.

*GCD Locked*
This is a good start, but there are other reasons we don't like being GCD locked. It means you can never take even a moment to look around and notice the battlefield, notice who is in trouble, maybe shout something out on Vent. If you have a situational utility ability, or even are asked to do something unusual on a boss fight, you're reluctant because you need those GCDs for more dps!!!!

(Usually when I say that, the response is "I can multitask!" But the reality doesn't always match that boast. What we see instead if players complaining about e.g. movement fights because that means they can't always get to step 6 of a 6 step damage rotation.)

Even more importantly, we also want design space for ourselves. When your spec is GCD locked, you have to start ignoring things like procs or free resources, because you can't spend them without screwing up your rotation.

That said, we know that being GCD locked is a really subjective issue. Some players like hitting a button every 1.5 (or 1.0) seconds and feel like they are waiting around when that doesn't happen. Fury warriors and the dps paladins who can't necessarily hit a button every 1.5 sec now have found their Cataclysm versions of the classes to feel almost foreign... though we still think it will feel better in the long run. I worry a little about the overall health of our game if going 1.5 seconds without hitting a button bores you to tears.  Overall, I think everyone would have more fun if they focused more on beating the boss as a team and less on their individual contribution to that effort.

We also know that some players are just really intolerant of randomness. They make the logical leap from understanding that dealing with randomness is a challenge they need to overcome to campaigning for us to remove the randomness altogether. This is particularly true in PvP, which some players want to be more like a button masher fighting game and less like an RPG. Suffice to say that we think randomness is healthy and necessary as long as it doesn't get out of control. Even though you may claim it's the easiest thing in the world to hit that Pyroblast button when Hot Streak procs, we also know that dps can vary enormously even between relatively skilled and fantastically skilled players, and a great deal of that is using the right abilities at the right time.

*Death Knight*
_GCD Locked_
Now with regard to DKs specifically, we think what is happening is that players are transfering characters in at 80 and ending up with 40% haste or whatever because of the way gear was converted on their character (no mastery, no armor pen). Once you get closer to 85, you won't have that much haste. You may be GCD locked for short periods of time when the stars align and you get a bunch of procs at once, but you'll also go streaks without those procs. This is still a world of difference from the DK on live, whose rotation collapses if they fail to get off a Plague Strike, or who can't even take advantage of free runes or procs, or who just have to reroll if they experience the unfortunate but also inevitable lag that comes with playing an online game.

Now, if you're one of those players who just hates gaps, then go ahead and stack a bunch of haste. You'll have to go out of your way to do that though, and sacrifice some other stats to get there. For the DK that balances gear out, you shouldn't be GCD locked for long periods of time.

*Druid*
_Stampede change_
You have 10 sec to use Ravage once, not as many Ravages as you can manage in 10 sec.

*Paladin*
_Protection and Holy Power_
If we give Protection ways to generate more Holy Power, then that opens the door for getting both Inquisition and Shield of the Righteous going at the same time. As soon as that's possible, you're going to assume you have to do both to be competitive, and whenever you can't keep both up, you're going to be frustrated. 

_Retribution in WotLK_
Ret was broken. If you don't see eye to eye with us on that, then it's understandable why the degree of change might be surprising to you. We tried to advertise that change was coming for a long time because we didn't want anyone to be surprised when it happened. Many players, including many Ret players, were just not happy with the mechanics of the spec in Lich King. I can understand if you just happened to love your character the way he or she was, but unfortunately, that doesn't give us much room to maneuver in attempting to implement a design that we will be happy with, and ultimately many players (though it will never be all) will be as well.

*Priest*
_Quality of life_
Power Word: Fortitude no longer requires candles. Poor candle vendors. 

Power Word: Shield does not require the target to be in your party or raid today on Live. We made this change in 3.3 IIRC.

We still want Shadowform to be a little bit of a tradeoff. If you have all the utility of a healer and can do competitive damage with any caster, then why would players want to be anything else?

We agree that the number of self buffs feels high. We'll try and think of a way to address that. 

_Discipline Priest_
There is an optional Discipline build where you take Atonement/Archangel and you can use Smite on the tanked target, and have higher HPS than if you just chain Heal the tank. This isn’t always optimal, as Atonement heals the lowest health target (which could be a Rogue standing in a fire), but that’s not always such a bad thing in Cataclysm’s environment where the MT doesn’t have to be spam healed. That said, we think it is interesting gameplay unique to the Disc priest.

In an upcoming build, when you critically hit with Smite your Atonement will critically heal (and cause Divine Aegis).

We’ve also optimized some of the talents, and pruned some of the 3-pointers down to 2-pointers and also reduced the mana cost of Power Word: Barrier throughout the tree.

We’re toning Spiritual Guidance down to bring the healing mount between Discipline and Holy closer together, Holy’s “talent tree passive” is currently stronger than intended than Discipline’s.

We want Disc to be able to do any raid job, but we are also trying not to just have every healer use the same retinue of spells. If the situation arises, they should be able to Prayer of Heal, Holy Nova, Prayer of Mending for comparable healing throughput / efficiency as Holy can to raid heal. The only difference is Holy can be in a Chakra state which increases the healing done, but then again Disc can heal for 30%+ (depending on Mastery) with Divine Aegis and can also cast free Prayer of Healing with Inner Focus.

*Rogue*
_Combat DPS_
Yep. I can tell you right now that Combat's dps is a little low. This is a known issue.

View all this here!


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## BondExtreme (Sep 28, 2010)

*News Update*

*Cataclysm Release Date Postponed*

*Beta Build 13066 - Portals removed from Shattrath and Dalaran*

*Super-Mega-Uber Cataclysm Items Update*

*Valor Points rewards*

*Tier 11 Armor Sets Stats*

*Justice Points Rewards*

*Arena Season 9/Rated Battlegrounds Rewards*

View the entire update and all the new items here at MMO Champion.

Anyway, yeah.... Very disappointed that the release won't be for another month or so..  At least we will have a better polished game.


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## slyfox2151 (Sep 29, 2010)

Thread Hi Jack 
 new PTR patch.




Patch 4.0.1 - PTR Build 13082
 A small PTR build is now available.

Spell Changes
 Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
 Druid (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
 Balance•Solar Beam now affects targets within 5 yards, down from 10 yards.

Hunter (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
 Beast Mastery•Mend Pet no longer heals for x health, now heals for 25% of the pet's total health over 10 sec.

Marksmanship•Flare now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
 •Silencing Shot interrupt effect now works on players. 

Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
 Retribution•Rule of Law no longer increases the critical effect chance of Holy Shock, affects Hammer of the Righteous instead. 

Priest (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
 Shadow•Mind Spike now causes a "high amount of threat".

Warlock (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
 Demonology•Health Funnel now sacrifices 1% of your total health to restore 6% of your summoned Demon's total health every 1 sec.
 •(Metamorphosis) Demon Leap has been changed back to his pre-Cataclysm version: Leap through the air and slam down on all enemies within 5 yards of the target area, causing 2213.67 to 2624.95 Shadow damage and stunning them for 2 sec.

Destruction•Searing Pain now costs 12% of base mana, up from 8% of base mana. Base damage increased by 150%.
 •Immolate base damage increased by 55%.

Affliction•Soul Swap now only removes your shadow damage-over-time effects from the target.


Link:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/


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## Zubasa (Sep 30, 2010)

*(Spoiler) Goblin Escape from Kezan Cinematic and Footbombing Deathwing in the Face*

Another great vid from TotalBiscuit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy3AKepEGRU

Also another great cinematic from Blizz.


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## BondExtreme (Oct 1, 2010)

*News Update - OMG!*

Guys, check out all this awesome information!!! All info from MMOC.

*Patch 4.0.1 release date*
We're very close to the release of Patch 4.0.1, at this point the only question is "How close?"

As far as I can tell, you can probably expect the patch on October 5th or October 12th. Ghostcrawler already suggested that the patch would be deployed right before the end of the arena season and added that "they shouldn't have a lasting impact on ratings, titles, and the like". 

Since the current PvP season will end when these changes go live, they shouldn't have a lasting impact on ratings, titles and the like. We are prepared to just drop a temporary player damage nerf on all BGs and Arenas if necessary just so things don't feel too silly until everyone can level up to 85.

*Heroic Deadmines Video*
View here.

*Cataclysm Release Date - December 7th*
Very cool how we have a release but a bit later than everyone thought it would be...

Season 9 starts on December 14th, a blue post stated that Cataclysm would be released one week earlier.

The next Arena Season will begin for level-85 players approximately one week after the official launch of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

*Tier 11 Preview - Warrior*
Holy crap! Guys, check their gear out! INCREDIBLE! 

*Professions Changes*
*Alchemy Updates
*Enchanting Updates
*Engineering Updates
*Tailoring Updates

For all you alchemists out there!!!!! WOW!!! Vial of the Sands Yes that's right guys! You can transform into that and get someone on your back for a nice ride! 

*Spell Changes Updates*
(View on link below)

View all of this amazing info at these two links. Link 1 - Link 2

Discuss, discuss!




Zubasa said:


> Another great vid from TotalBiscuit.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy3AKepEGRU
> 
> Also another great cinematic from Blizz.



Thanks for posting this. I saw that too and my mouth dropped. I can't believe how much work Blizz is putting into this game. Can't wait to see more cinematics.


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## Littlejenny (Oct 1, 2010)

sry for asking noob question , but i'm really new to WoW and stucking in leveling at lv 20 ... it's really slow, can someone help me to find the best way to lvl ...

______________________

 Website Development
 Software Development


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## animal007uk (Oct 1, 2010)

Littlejenny said:


> sry for asking noob question , but i'm really new to WoW and stucking in leveling at lv 20 ... it's really slow, can someone help me to find the best way to lvl ...


 grab a load of quest , do random dungeons and battle grounds inbetween your quest. i did lvl 79 to 80 in less than 4 hours using this method. also when it shows up do the battle ground that says (call to arms) next to it for even more exp and honor.


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## Zubasa (Oct 2, 2010)

animal007uk said:


> Littlejenny said:
> 
> 
> > sry for asking noob question , but i'm really new to WoW and stucking in leveling at lv 20 ... it's really slow, can someone help me to find the best way to lvl ...
> ...


Having leveled 5 characters to level 80, I can do 79~80 just under 3 hours with addons.
Addons like Quest Helper are very handy.

PUG (pick up group) dungeons or BGs can be quite troublesome given how many terribad players out there.
Depending on which class/role you play and depending on which dungeons you happen to be doing, PUGs can be very enjoyable or absolute nightmares.

@Littlejenny may I ask what class/spec you play?


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## BondExtreme (Oct 2, 2010)

Hehe. Yeah good ol pugs. It's funny how that at times you can have the best group and then other times you get stuck with the worst group. You would think they are 5 years old. -_-


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## Frick (Oct 2, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> Hehe. Yeah good ol pugs. It's funny how that at times you can have the best group and then other times you get stuck with the worst group. You would think they are 5 years old. -_-



Welcome to the internets. 

And how on earth do you get to those levels in such a short time? Questing takes time as it's pretty much the same as grinding.


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## Zubasa (Oct 2, 2010)

Frick said:


> Welcome to the internets.
> 
> And how on earth do you get to those levels in such a short time? Questing takes time as it's pretty much the same as grinding.


The key is to minimize traveling time 
A good questing Addon will help you to pick the best route for a bunch of quest.
Also by experience I level in place where I can finish half a dozen quest all at once and turn them in on one go.


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## BondExtreme (Oct 2, 2010)

Frick said:


> Welcome to the internets.
> 
> And how on earth do you get to those levels in such a short time? Questing takes time as it's pretty much the same as grinding.



79-80 in under 3 hours? It doesn't sound hard at all :/ I only have 2 80's but with even the Blizzard UI now tells you where to go for quests. lol


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## Zubasa (Oct 2, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> 79-80 in under 3 hours? It doesn't sound hard at all :/ I only have 2 80's but with even the Blizzard UI now tells you where to go for quests. lol


Leveling as healing spec under 3 hours is the best I can do 
The thing is some class/specs are much better at leveling than others...
I know someone in China managed to do 70~80 within 16 hours. 

BTW, when WotLK first released, the Blizzard UI does not give any useful locations on the map.

Edit: Anyways, there is no point braggin about leveling time...
The point is most experienced players should be able to do it around 3 hours give or take.
I bet the gold farmers from the mainland can level much faster.


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## BondExtreme (Oct 2, 2010)

Zubasa said:


> I know someone in China managed to do 70~80 within 16 hours.



Would this someone happen to be you? Hehe j/k 

In my opinion I always thought healing while leveling would just take longer. You take more damage it seems and your attacks are weaker. :/ Just my experience.


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## Zubasa (Oct 2, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> Would this someone happen to be you? Hehe j/k
> 
> In my opinion I always thought healing while leveling would just take longer. You take more damage it seems and your attacks are weaker. :/ Just my experience.


I leveled as a healer because it was much easier to get into dungeons as one.
I did that back then before dual-spec and dungeon finder.
Now that there are dual spec+dungeon finder+heirlooms leveling is easy.


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## olithereal (Oct 2, 2010)

Just started playing back, after a break of nearly two years (quit about a week after Wrath, I was disappoint). Re-leveling an Undead Mage, what I've been playing since pre-bc . Undead is the only way to go. Also, glad they took a few steps to make leveling a bit less painful, a welcome change. 

Pretty pumped for Cataclysm. Has blizzard stated when they will introduce 4.0.1?


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## BondExtreme (Oct 2, 2010)

olithereal said:


> Pretty pumped for Cataclysm. Has blizzard stated when they will introduce 4.0.1?



In the above post I made bro.  Unfortunately though they JUST delayed the patch today.. 

But yeah I quit in Feb this past year and will be coming back soon. I don't know when though. I may come back as soon as patch 4.0.1 hits or maybe 4.0.2. 

You are right though when you say they will make leveling a bit less stressful and a lot more fun. Every zone is changed and they are adding LOADS of quests even for the low levels. 

Btw, what server are you on, olithereal?


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## RoutedScripter (Oct 2, 2010)

I got the beta today !


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## olithereal (Oct 2, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> In the above post I made bro.  Unfortunately though they JUST delayed the patch today..
> 
> But yeah I quit in Feb this past year and will be coming back soon. I don't know when though. I may come back as soon as patch 4.0.1 hits or maybe 4.0.2.
> 
> ...



I'm currently on Deathwing. Used to play on Shattered Hands.


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## Paintface (Oct 2, 2010)

olithereal said:


> I'm currently on Deathwing. Used to play on Shattered Hands.



on alliance?


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## v12dock (Oct 3, 2010)

olithereal said:


> I'm currently on Deathwing. Used to play on Shattered Hands.



Shattered Hand.. Horde?! Thats where I play


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## olithereal (Oct 3, 2010)

v12dock said:


> Shattered Hand.. Horde?! Thats where I play



No way! Yes, I was Horde. Been in Hit List for a while....when the guild was alive and actually pvp'ing.

Ps. Still Horde on Deathwing.


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## v12dock (Oct 3, 2010)

Ahh Hit list lol, I was in the TOP pvp guild back in the day... New Age of Craft


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## BondExtreme (Oct 3, 2010)

*sigh* Why can't anyone ever be in my battlegroup? lol I play as horde on Korgath. It's in Vengeance. If you guys where, you would be feeling the wrath of my new shadowy apparition. xD


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## slyfox2151 (Oct 3, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> *sigh* Why can't anyone ever be in my battlegroup? lol I play as horde on Korgath. It's in Vengeance. If you guys where, you would be feeling the wrath of my new shadowy apparition. xD



Dems sound like fighting words... 


come on the PTR, ill take you on 


i currently have all my toons on alliance,
lesoul
lewarlock
lefire
ledruid
lewarrior
lehunty
lepaladin
and DEXXTY! , bonus points for guessing the correct class for dexty and lesoul.


i used to play on Dath Remar, US - Ocianic servers. Warlock Druid and Shaman ... stoped playing last december... lucky the PTR is free.... think i might start playing again with cataclysm tho.


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## olithereal (Oct 3, 2010)

v12dock said:


> Ahh Hit list lol, I was in the TOP pvp guild back in the day... New Age of Craft



Good times! Relentless are still going at it?


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## zithe (Oct 3, 2010)

Anyone on Reckoning battlegroup? :\

<--- firetree


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## v12dock (Oct 3, 2010)

Relentless is no more. Downtime is the top raiding guild, and Ruin all day baby


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## olithereal (Oct 4, 2010)

v12dock said:


> Relentless is no more. Downtime is the top raiding guild, and Ruin all day baby



Relentless no more? Meh, not surprising with the terrible raiding content in Wrath...heh. Ruin was a cool BG, horde sucked massive dicks in AV though.


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## v12dock (Oct 4, 2010)

Not when there was Shattered Hand premades


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## olithereal (Oct 4, 2010)

v12dock said:


> Not when there was Shattered Hand premades



Touché.


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## Paintface (Oct 4, 2010)

http://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Cataclysm-Collectors-Pc/dp/B003O6N74S/

Just preordered cataclysm collectors edition  i regret not having bought the previous ones as collectors edition.

Ill be ready to play on release date.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 4, 2010)

Only collectors edition I regret not getting is the original, I still want a damn Mini Diablo.


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## BondExtreme (Oct 4, 2010)

Paintface said:


> http://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Cataclysm-Collectors-Pc/dp/B003O6N74S/
> 
> Just preordered cataclysm collectors edition  i regret not having bought the previous ones as collectors edition.
> 
> Ill be ready to play on release date.



If you buy it on amazon won't it get to you a few days after release? And you should just go to the midnight release so you will have it right away


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## BondExtreme (Oct 4, 2010)

*BIG NEWS!*

Our release date of December 7th is confirmed ladies and gents! 

*World of Warcraft(R): Cataclysm(TM) in Stores Starting December 7*
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.

*Stormwind Update*
This update was added in the latest beta build.
Image1
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Image5

*Cataclysm Darkmoon Cards*
Image

*GCD Usage and not thinking with your fingers*
We don't think so. It might be fun when you're looking at a target dummy, but then in an actual encounter with other players, you might find yourself sitting there looking at those two buttons without realizing that everyone else in the group is dead. Because you have such little time to look at anything besides those buttons, you aren't really playing as a group. You're just focused -- solely -- on maximizing your own rotation.

We had a lot of complaints in LK that the complexity of managing a class rotation was at odds with the complexity we also add to the boss encounters. If anything we want to buy more space for the boss encounters, because those are at least varied, rather than simplify those while complexifying your rotation, which just makes every encounter feel the same. At the very least, we want to slow the game down a little so that you have more opportunity to make decisions with your head instead of every wipe being a mistake of the fingers.

This is a subjective call, and we don't expect everyone to agree with it, but that's where we're coming from. 

*Healing*
*Mana Management and Overhealing*
I think the risk of overhealing will exist. If you're not doing so now, it's probably because you're in green or blue gear with relatively low crit rates. If the rogue takes 2K damage from a splash attack, and you use Divine Light, you'll probably overheal. If you're in a raid and both healers attempt to heal her, you'll almost certainly overheal.

I agree that the risk of overhealing is key to mana management. There is more to healing than mana management though. The cast times and cooldowns of heals have a big role too. If you start casting a slow heal for a very wounded ally, then they might die. If you squander your cooldown then it's not going to be there for you when you really need it. Healers are also somewhat notorious for keeping everyone else up but forgetting to keep themselves alive. You just slip into the selfless role I suppose.

*Tanking*
*Tanks with 100k HP 2-shot in Heroic*
If your tanks are taking 50K in a boss hit, then one of the following is most likely true:

1) You are ignoring some mechanic of the fight (like debuffing or interrupting).
2) You're talking about an isolated scary moment in the fight when you and the tank need to consider cooldowns.
3) The encounter is bugged or overtuned. If you suspect this is the case, then provide specific feedback (the name of the boss at the very least) in the dungeons and raids forums (ideally the beta version).

If you are a reasonably competent healer who uses a variety of heals and isn't spamming Divine Light on every trash pull, then you should be able to keep everyone alive. If your group isn't just ignoring encounter mechanics and trying to burn the boss down, then you shouldn't be running out of mana either.

*Vengeance*
As I said in the other thread just now, you shouldn't be dependent on Vengeance to maintain threat in 5-player dungeons. Vengeance scales slowly and falls off quickly for that reason -- we don't want that to be the system that lets you stay ahead. It's intended to help with raid scaling, not be a crutch for poor dps.

As we have said several times, we don't want Prot paladins to fill every GCD. You also shouldn't need to in order to maintain threat.

If you are having difficulties in PTR or on Beta, please let us know, but be as specific as you can. Who were you losing threat to? What kind of dps were they doing? Was it an AE or single target scenario? How was their gear relative to yours? We're unlikely to just buff threat generation based on generic "I have threat problems" reports. Specificity is the key here. It could very well be a bug on the side of the tank or the dps that is causing the problem.

Remember that we very recently buffed the threat generation of Righteous Fury (and similar mechanics for the other tanks), so try and base your perceptions on very recent experiences. Things change pretty quickly at this stage. 


*Vengeance falling off*
It shouldn't translate to bosses though, because you shouldn't be dependent on Vengeance to keep threat. If Vengeance falls off, you shouldn't immediately wipe. That's not the intent. We don't want Vengeance to be the ultimate threat ability. It will eventually stack up and generally stay that way. It shouldn't be a razor's edge for you being able to keep threat.

-- The rouge pulls as soon as the fight starts -- a tank problem perhaps, but not a Vengeance problem. (It could also be that the rogue is hitting the wrong target or not waiting for the tank.)
-- The healer's hots pull mob #5 in an AE situation -- a tank problem perhaps, but not a Vengeance problem. (It could also be that the tank is terrible at generating threat.)
-- Six minutes into a boss fight, the mage starts to creep up on your threat -- this is a Vengeance problem. (It could also be that the tank isn't doing a good job hitting their main attacks.)

The reason we keep downplaying Vengeance in 5-player dungeons, which is all anyone is running at the moment on beta, is because it's not a dungeon mechanic. If you need a comparison, think of something like Fortitude or Blessing of Kings. It's nice but not at all mandatory for even heroic 5-player runs. It's pretty close to mandatory for a raid.

*Tank Threat*
We don't want tank threat to be so high that the dps are absolved of all responsibility. If players are on the wrong targets, that is a L2P problem. If the mage opens with Arcane Blast before you even get a hit in, that is a L2P problem. If your group feels like they have to wait 6-10 seconds before they can start attacking, then that's either a tank problem or a problem on our end. Likewise, if your group feels constantly throttled several seconds or minutes into the fight, then either you aren't generating as much threat as you are capable of, or our numbers are preventing you from doing so. 

*Paladin*
*Divine Plea*
Your calculations seem to assume that damage comes in at a steady rate and so you can just solve for when to use Divine Plea. But damage usually doesn't work like that. You should use Divine Plea at the right time, which doesn't always mean as soon as you start to get low.

*Using all your GCDs*
Yes, and we have said this a lot, so it shouldn't come as a surprise. In a nutshell, the problem with filling every single GCD is it gives you no room to do anything else. If you're called upon to do something special or even run away or even look around to see how the fight is going, you don't have the cognitive space to do so. If we give you a proc to use and your rotation is so locked then you can't use the proc, then we have a problem. If you literally can't stand to go 1.5 sec every now and then without hitting a button, then our game has serious problems. 

I know this is really weird for paladins who just have the muscle memory of always hitting something -- anything -- every GCD. It will take some getting used. Just try to evaluate whether it's truly not fun or whether it's just really different. Having any class that hits a button every 1.5 seconds is something we're trying to move away from though. We don't think it's good for the game.

You should not be using Hammer of the Righteous or Inquisition on single target fights, because there are better alternatives. Holy Wrath is designed to be used in both single target or group fights. (And if you can't use Holy Wrath because of breaking CC concerns, then back the target away or just hold off on Holy Wrath for the time being -- same as a warrior using Thunder Clap). I would use Avenger's Shield on both single target or group fights, though it can be used in a lot of different ways, so if you need to silence a caster, then I would use some common sense there. I would use Consecrate for groups, particularly for spawning or moving groups. If you have the mana to use it single target, then go for it. Exorcism is probably too expensive to ever be a serious Protection ability.

*Tanking abilities*
This keeps coming up, so let me just spell it out.

Single target abilities: Crusader Strike, Shield of the Righteous, Judgement, Holy Wrath, Consecrate (maybe), Avenger's Shield.

AE abilities: Hammer of the Righteous, Inquisition, Judgement, Holy Wrath, Consecrate, Avenger's Shield.

That's ignoring things like Divine Protection, Word of Glory, Hammer of Justice, Hammer of Wrath, etc.

I wouldn't just hit all of those on cooldown though. Sometimes you want to position Consecrate, as you point out, or save Avenger's Shield to deal with adds. Sometimes you risk breaking CC. Sometimes you might want to blow a cooldown or use a Hand or something else.

*Threat generation and GCD*
I see two different arguments keep coming up.

The first is that you can't generate enough threat without more buttons to push. This isn't our design and it sounds like threat may still just be too tight in some circumstances. More GCDs does not have to be the answer to threat situations though. If Avenger's Shield hit for 60K then you'd have a healthy threat lead for a long time.

The second argument is that you just like having to hit something every single global. This isn't a "I can't function" complaint like the one above. It's a personal preference. We don't think there is anything sacred about the 1.5 sec GCD. I think current paladins have just grown accustomed to hitting a button every 1.5 sec. But we don't think the current paladin plays well. We don't like the 969 rotation. If you do, I understand, but it isn't coming back.

Let's get the threat situation ironed out and see how the Protadin plays for you then. At worst some of you may find the spec boring, but a lot of players find it boring on live, so we're not really out much there. If playing it is less EZ mode on the other hand, it might be more interesting to you or perhaps to other players who never paid the class much attention before.

*Protection Paladin rotation complexity*
(I strongly suggest that you read the whole Paladin Tanking Thread)
This was a problem though, because the Protection paladin was a fairly easy spec to play well while the other 3 tanks had a lot more they had to manage. It was frustrating for the warriors, druid and death knights to have to give it their all just to keep up with a novice paladin. (To be fair, the other option is just to make everyone more autopiloty.)

Now don't get me wrong. We often ask a lot of tanks in terms of moving the boss, knowing when the big hits are coming, and so on. We don't want the paladin rotation to be John Madden, and we don't everything to collapse if you fail to hit Crusader Strike at the right time. I'm getting the impression that threat is on the razor's edge for a lot of you, which is going to make everything feel too restrictive and frustrating. It could be a level 80 issue (since we have spent most of our time balancing at 85) or it could be that players are doing different things that we are doing internally or seeing on the beta. We watch a lot of dungeons, but we don't catch everything. 

*Warrior*
*Enrage uptime*
We think it's dumb for Enrage to be up 100% of the time. What's the point? It should just be tacked on to Defensive Stance at that point. We aren't going to balance warrior dps around it being up 100% in Cataclysm if in fact it is not up 100% of the time.

Virtually every number related to Prot warriors changed, so it's difficult to just compare a -5% here and a +5% there to figure out if your dps went up or down. The most helpful thing you can do is report on differences you notice before or after a PTR copy / beta conversion or even how you stack up relative to other tanks or other dps. 

*Warrior DPS is lacking*
Unfortunately, "most agree that prot warrior dps is lacking" is not an actionable item. I need something more concrete than that to take to my team. Is your dps lower than it is on live? How much lower? In what circumstances? Is it lower than other tanks? How much lower? In what circumstances?

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with being vague. Maybe your post will spur someone else to chime in with more details in agreement or disagreement. Just don't make the leap from "My dps feels low" to "Why haven't they buffed me yet?"

In the specific case of AEs such as Thunder Clap, we don't want them to be so powerful that they can hold threat all on their own. We don't want the AE tanking rotation to be just TC and Shockwave. If you are killing things one at a time, then you should make additional attacks to the next target to be killed and Thunder Clap should be sufficient to prevent healer aggro or the like.

Article Source


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## Hybrid_theory (Oct 4, 2010)

Ah they didnt have the release date this morning on mmo champion, thanks for the post.

Well i went around discovering the dungeons with my premade war. Gonna try and tank some of em tonight. I did some quests in vashir and its an interesting zone so far. get the sea legs ability to swim faster. and my buddy said you get a sea horse to ride at 450% speed.


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## v12dock (Oct 5, 2010)

So who is up for some serious world PVP, I think this expansion is going to restore pvp back to its true form.


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## olithereal (Oct 5, 2010)

v12dock said:


> So who is up for some serious world PVP, I think this expansion is going to restore pvp back to its true form.



Damn straight! I just wish they would remove Flyers...hehehe. That would bring back some real world pvp.


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## v12dock (Oct 5, 2010)

I don't know I think flyers will take it to the next level, you gank someones guild member then the whole guild is out there in 5mins along with yours......


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## BondExtreme (Oct 5, 2010)

Yeah. I think when Cata comes out I will be more into PvP this time around. LK just didn't do it for me... :/ Can't wait though to own some noobs in the new battlegrounds!


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## Zubasa (Oct 5, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> Yeah. I think when Cata comes out I will be more into PvP this time around. LK just didn't do it for me... :/ Can't wait though to own some noobs in the new battlegrounds!


WotLK is what drives me away from PVP :shadedshu
Arenas were never a good idea, but...
Death & Decay perma fear = FAIL.
WotLK = worst product Blizzard ever relased, no contest.


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## BondExtreme (Oct 5, 2010)

Zubasa said:


> WotLK is what drives me away from PVP :shadedshu
> Arenas were never a good idea, but...
> Death & Decay perma fear = FAIL.
> WotLK = worst product Blizzard ever relased, no contest.



I agree with all that entirely. Well as for arenas go, they just needed more arena maps. 

But yeah. A lot of people do agree that LK was the worst expansion for the game.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 5, 2010)

BC was worse, felt disconnected from the rest of the game, was like living in a coloring book, and it brought resilience, I hate bandage fixes like that. I did like some of the end game raids, they did finally get though, but I honestly like ICC, and really like TOC25, and they can be decent, not amazingly tough, but entertaining.


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## Zubasa (Oct 5, 2010)

I just skipeed TOC entirely, I charged strait into ICC.
TOC is just one big loot ship. There are no real lore behind it.
TBH most of WotLK is just boring, whats the point of having 25-man raid boss that are so sup-par that we one shot them on the first try... 
From my experience even Karazhan is a better instance than ICC.
I didn't even mentioned the 5-mans... Terribad people can just "stand in the fire" so to speak and won't risk dying in anyway... :shadedshu
From the looks of it Cataclysm should set things right.

Edit: I agree that resilience is a bandage fix. Right now it is also unfair to classes with mechanics base on crit.
But without it there won't be any from of competitive PVP, it will be all about one-shoting the other team.
Cataclysm brings change to resilience which I am quite pleased by how it looks.


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## olithereal (Oct 5, 2010)

Y





v12dock said:


> I don't know I think flyers will take it to the next level, you gank someones guild member then the whole guild is out there in 5mins along with yours......



Well, imo flyers is ehat killed  wppvp in BC... I mean in vanilla, you saw someone ride by you, you had quote a few ways to dismount and kill him...since flyers, you just mount and run away...no way of getting any real harm..

Bah, thats my opinion..
Ps writing from my cell excuse the spelling


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 5, 2010)

Zubasa said:


> I just skipeed TOC entirely, I charged strait into ICC.
> TOC is just one big loot ship. There are no real lore behind it.
> TBH most of WotLK is just boring, whats the point of having 25-man raid boss that are so sup-par that we one shot them on the first try...
> From my experience even Karazhan is a better instance than ICC.
> ...



Try Anub in TOC 25 on Hard Modes, when that first came out it was very hard, I was hearing about 25 man raids that needed so much DPS they could only bring 2 healers, which a good 10 man brings 2, and crappy 10 mans bring 3, which is crazy that a 25 man would bring that little. I honestly never cared about lore with the game, just entertaining fights, I like the Beasts, and the Faction Champions, and most of the fights in TOC.

It might help that I got bored with WotLK back in December 2008 and quit the game. I just finally returned about 1.5 months ago and got to clear all the new content, it was refreshing to see so much added as when I left there wasn't even an Uluadar.

And I do understand what your saying about PvP and Res, but I had much more fun without in in Vanilla. I just figure, if they are rebuilding Azeroth, and removing a bunch of stats from the game, they should do it properly and remove resilience and make everything scale correctly. Certain classes benefit too much from the system, I know in Arenas and highly competitive things it will balance out. But a class like a Rogue, open world can skip on the gear and own.

I remember on my Orc Warr, who was 4/5 T7.5 in December 2008, which Naxx was easy, but I was the first DPS Warr on the server with T7.5 shoulders, I was extremely geared. I got jumped by a 78 rogue, he stun locked me to 50% hp, I finally got out of that, then he disarmed me for what, 10 seconds? By the time I got my weapon back I was at 10% hp and could finally start fighting him, just lame.


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## Zubasa (Oct 5, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> (skip)


Well I did some heroic ICC and my friend did all of TOC H, and I ( and my friend) can tell you those are not as hard compare to Vashj and Kael'thas that I did back in TBC as a Tankadin.

On the pvp side of things, Res was changed right around Ulduar 
So Rogue stun locking you to death is pretty much no more, unless the rogue vastly out-gear you as a warrior.
Getting stun locked by a rogue is not a problem on my warlock with 1k+ res, I can tank a rogue depending on the rogue's spec.

Also it partly have to do being a raiding warror, should be fury speced. Arms and prot do fair much better against rogues.
Fury do suffer quite badly due to Res reducing crit chance (and damage) thus reduces your rage income. <= This is exactly what I was refering to being "unfair to classes base on crit"
The other 2 plate classes have a static resource income which suffers much less. Alas Facerolladin + Dud Knights.

I also play a warrior, so I feel your pain. (Altoholic )
First thing comes 4.0 is that they removed the crit chance reduction from Res 
They also change rage generation by letting you gain more rage with faster weapon swings. (thus rage scaling with haste just like other phy. DPS classes do)


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 5, 2010)

Ah I didn't know there was a Res change, thats nice. And yeah I was Fury, but I was the best geared Fury Warrior on my entire server at the time, vs a 78 Rogue, shouldn't even matter spec or gear, I remember just doing Charge then Whirlwind and healers would just fall over dead. Warriors always scale well in PvE as more damage means more Rage, means more abilities, means more damage, it's a nice loop. But eventually high end gear scales too well and they always get nerfed, and in PvP Res just makes it harsh like you said. I love Warrs, but sick of the rollercoaster scaling and nerfs to fix how it scales constantly so now I been playing my Lock.

But nice that 4.0 is bringing some changes. I want to play a Warr again, but I hear that Blizz has basically said, that any Hybrid class in the future will always be behind Pures in damage. I liked it when there wasn't Dual spec, because now they hang that over your head "you bring util, so you will do less damage", but not everyone wants to tank, heal, or damage and bounce around being forced to get more gear. I remember in Vanilla I would OT all the time in BWL, AQ40, MC, and many other things as Fury spec, was just fine for OT, bring that back, shouldn't need to be Prot specced to OT.


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## BondExtreme (Oct 5, 2010)

Zubasa said:


> I just skipeed TOC entirely, I charged strait into ICC.



Hehe. Good thing you did. There was no purpose for that place. Really no lore, no trash, no challenge. The only real challenge in that place was Anub on heroic. All other encounters even on heroic were a joke.. Blizz better not pull a crappy raid like that again. Remember though, this is my opinion.


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## Zubasa (Oct 5, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Ah I didn't know there was a Res change, thats nice. And yeah I was Fury, but I was the best geared Fury Warrior on my entire server at the time, vs a 78 Rogue, shouldn't even matter spec or gear, I remember just doing Charge then Whirlwind and healers would just fall over dead. Warriors always scale well in PvE as more damage means more Rage, means more abilities, means more damage, it's a nice loop. But eventually high end gear scales too well and they always get nerfed, and in PvP Res just makes it harsh like you said. I love Warrs, but sick of the rollercoaster scaling and nerfs to fix how it scales constantly so now I been playing my Lock.
> 
> But nice that 4.0 is bringing some changes. I want to play a Warr again, but I hear that Blizz has basically said, that any Hybrid class in the future will always be behind Pures in damage. I liked it when there wasn't Dual spec, because now they hang that over your head "you bring util, so you will do less damage", but not everyone wants to tank, heal, or damage and bounce around being forced to get more gear. I remember in Vanilla I would OT all the time in BWL, AQ40, MC, and many other things as Fury spec, was just fine for OT, bring that back, shouldn't need to be Prot specced to OT.


Don't worry about about PVE 
They are changing rage generation entirely, what basically happen is that rage no longer scale with crit so to speak.
Ghostcrawler mentioned that rage is calculated with the default weapon speed now, so rage now scales with haste, hit, and expertise, but not crit and damage.
This is inline with rogues getting more energy and hunters get more focus directly from haste.
Haste is the weakess DPS stat for phy. DPS right now, so making resources scale with it should not create an over-scaling problem.

Blizzard, specifically Kalgan (Tom Chilton) did said that classes with more utility should do less damage. (What a hybrid hater )
GhostCrawler (Greg Street) being now incharge of WoW, is revamping the buff system in 4.0.
He basically gives out buffs and utility to all the "pure" dps classes  (mages get Blood Lust/Heroism, rogues gets different buffs depending on spec)
GC goes as far as giving hunters next to every buff there is in the game to their pets. (BM gets the more powerful ones, Core Hounds being Exotic pets even get Blood Lust/Heroism )
So Kalgan's statement makes no sense now.  (more  for this A. Hole)


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 5, 2010)

Interesting about the Rage gen, if they hadn't made the other classes scale the same, it would seem the same to me, but now seeing other classes working on the same mechanics makes it feel like they will work harder to balance it out.

And I know exactly what you mean about buffs, and screwing hybrids, just lame. But I really blame the dual spec system. You shouldn't need to be Main Spec to do everything out there, Off Spec for Off Healing or Off Tanking allows classes like Feral Druids, Ret Pallys, or even DPS Warrs (who toss on a shield quick) the ability to really have fun with their class. The only time I ever liked Resilience was in BC, I would wear 2 pieces or so to be basically uncrittable in DPS gear, then switch to sword and board for trash pulls and entertain myself.


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## Zubasa (Oct 5, 2010)

Sadly, since so many people hate Res they are nerfing it further.
Res will only affect players and pets in 4.0.

About tanking for non-tank specs....
DKs are getting blood as the tank spec, because the problem that causes in PVP.
You can't have a class that have both tanking talents and DPS talents in the same tree...
DKs right now can get both DPS and tanking talents for PVP, so right now DKs are taking less damage while putting out more DPS in PVP than warriors. :shadedshu (BTW these suckers also heals)
Comes Cata Feral Druids are the only spec that can both tank and DPS in the same tree. (But druids are no longer immune to sheep, it also cost a good chunk of mana shifting)
Druids are always the special case anyways, they are the true hybrid that can do all 4 roles.


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## slyfox2151 (Oct 6, 2010)

in 4.0.1 res will no longer effect crits. it will be a %damage reductions... atm 1000resil is about 20 % total damage reduction from players only.


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## BondExtreme (Oct 6, 2010)

*News Update*

*Blizzcon 2010 Schedule now Available*
The schedule for the Blizzcon is now available, the WoW schedule is as follow:

*Friday, October 22*
Opening Ceremony - 11:00AM - 11:30AM
Dungeons & Raids Panel - 01:30PM - 02:30PM
Quests & Lore Panel - 03:00PM - 04:00PM
Live Raid - 04:30PM - 05:30PM
Tournament - From 12:00PM to 08:30PM	

*Saturday, October 23*
Cinematics: Cataclysm - 10:30AM - 11:30AM
World of Warcraft Class Q&A - 12:00PM - 01:00PM
World of Warcraft Open Q&A - 01:30PM - 02:30PM
World of Warcraft Art - 03:00PM - 04:00PM
Tournament - From 10:00AM to 04:30PM

"This is a pre-expansion Blizzcon and we probably won't see a lot of omgawesome announcements. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the "Cinematics: Cataclysm" was the first screening of the Cataclysm cinematic, that would explain why they encrypted movies in the game files to prevent datamining." (Quote was from MMOC)

Full Blizzcon schedule

*Cataclysm Raid Testing Soon!*
We've been testing raids extensively in-house for months. Beta raid testing will begin very soon. Stay tuned.

And yes, there will be new character templates available and there will be a reset to character copy limit. 

[...] Daelo and/or a CM will post a schedule when we are ready.

*Guild Member Caps for Cataclysm*
We will be introducing a new, hard cap of 600 members in a single guild for Cataclysm. This function will go live with patch 4.0.1 and is already live on the beta and PTR's.

As most of you already know, we have supported a soft cap of 500 members in a guild since World of Warcraft launched. We have allowed guilds to exceed the 500 limit up until now since being in a guild really just amounted to ranks and chat channels. With the advent of the new guild system in Cataclysm we are tracking many more things on each individual player in a guild and in order to support that, we need to limit the amount of members to a reasonable level.

The new cap of 600 members is fully supported in the new guild system and that means that everyone will be visible in the ui and able to contribute to all guild functions like experience and reputation gain. We have pulled a large number of statistics to get to the 600 member cap for guilds and we are happy to say that this value covers more than 99.9% of all the active guilds in World of Warcraft.

The small number of guilds that are over the 600 person cap will be able to keep their guilds intact (and fully supported in the new guild system), but they will not be able to add new members until they fall below the 600 member cap.

*Dressing Room Zoom*
"Cataclysm will add a much-needed feature to the Dressing Room, you can finally zoom in/out with your mousewheel! " (Quote from MMOC)
Dressing Room

*New race/classes combo availability*
They will be available to everyone shortly before the release of Cataclysm when The Shattering takes place.

*Dance Studio - Blizzard promised me a (dancing) pony!*
New dances remain a work in progress and we do not have plans to implement them prior to Cataclysm.

[...] We absolutely wouldn't advertise something in a trailer if we have no intention of including that feature. The trailers are virtually always created more than a year prior to the release of what they're advertising. All of the features are planned -- or work on them has already begun -- but we never know until much closer to the release date what features might have to be shelved to ensure bigger features are polished.

We announced new dances for Wrath of the Lich King and a good deal of work went into them, but we weren't happy with the feature overall as we got closer to release. We decided we would hold off on trying to push it out anyway and focus on bigger projects.

This is the nature of good development, even if it leaves some disappointed.

*New Official Website*
The new website is still in development and planned for release prior to the launch of Cataclysm. The new forums will coincide with this release.

*Guild Leveling*
*Guild features in 4.0.1*
The user interface changes for guilds will take place in 4.0.1. The actual guild advancement features will be implemented with Cataclysm itself.

*Guild Mounts reputation requirements*
The reputation requirement will be shown on the tooltip once the reward is unlocked via it's corresponding achievement.

Both the guild mounts require exalted faction to purchase.

*Guild Experience/Reputation Boost on Beta*
The 5x multiplier is currently active for both experience and reputation. Getting stuck around 9k is right around where we expect players to be with the multiplier. The cap on reputation is weekly and will reset Tuesday night at 3am. 

*Raids & Dungeons*
*Mimiron's Head / Invincible in 4.0.1*
No changes are being made to raid mounts in patch 4.0.1.

*Realm First achievements - 10/25 Mode*
They are available to both 10 and 25 player raids, whoever does it first.

[...] We currently have no plans to change realm first raid kills into separate achievements for 10 / 25 player raids. Our new flexible raid lock system allows players many more choices and opportunities to complete the content in the way that suits them best. Making separate achievements here goes directly against that philosophy.

And just to be clear, these achievements offer no rewards or titles.

*Classes*
*Ability queue system*
_If I am tanking on live, and I spamming devastate pre-emptively and I see shield slam light up from my proc, I can easily switch over to hitting shield slam and shield slam will go off.

On beta, if I am spamming devastate and I see shield slam light up. I will be locked into devastate if it's within like 1~sec until the GCD is up. I see devastate light up, I try spam to hit shield slam but it will not go off._
We had to change the ability queue system you are describing to fix an exploit that was threatening to become pretty widespread. It is unfortunately one of those cases where a few bad apples ruin things for everyone. 

We are working on an improvement where the most recent command will override the previous one. If for example you are spamming Hamstring, and then succeed in snaring someone, you can switch to Mortal Strike which will clear out the Hamstring queue instead of wasting more GCDs on Hamstring.

*Death Knight*
*Rune Strike*
We changed Rune Strike to: after a dodge or parry or whenever you are in Blood Presence.

_We can use RS any time we have 20 RP if we are in blood presence, No cd other then GCD. No need for avoidance to light it up._
Correct

*Paladin*
*Holy Paladin - Beacon of Light / Protector of the Innocent*
Beacon isn't going anywhere. We think the Cataclysm implementation is in a good place between never wanting to heal the tank and always wanting to heal the tank.

We changed Protector of the Innocent to make the talent feel less like Divinity not because we were trying to band-aid any real or imagined paladin problems as some of your conspiracy theories suggest. 

If, as some of you think, Holy paladin throughput is low, then we'll buff it before it goes live. It will be easier to make direct comparisons between healing specs once more folks (besides us I mean) are testing raids. And by direct comparisons, I don't mean who wins the meters. 

*Paladin Tanking and GCD*
As you might have surmised, I spent a lot of time in this thread gathering information because we were concerned about player perceptions of the paladin rotation. That conversation in turn spawned additional, less-public conversations and ultimately resulted in our convening a distinguished panel of experts in our secret mountain hideaway for a discussion of paladin tanking mechanics.

While we still have grave concerns about players being able to fill every GCD, we also don't want to change paladin tanking so much that it is unrecognizable for long-term paladins. Therefore, we are going to try Crusader Strike on a 3 second cooldown for Protection only. Hammer of the Righteous will have the same cooldown. This will allow Protection to fill in almost every gap in the rotation and not be waiting so long on every cooldown, which should help the rotation feel more active. It will also allow Inquisition and Shield of the Righteous to sometimes be up at the same time. That change is pretty significant and will no doubt invite all sorts of theorycrafting on the right way to manage Holy Power. We still have additional grave concerns that once paladins can have both Inquisition and Shield of the Righteous up simultaneously that they will feel underpowered and therefore frustrated whenever they lack sufficient Holy Power for 100% uptime on both. We'll just have to see how that feels.

While we still think an off the GCD interrupt isn't an essential tool for a tank, we also don't think it's going to break anything for paladins to have one either. Our eventual solution is to let Vindication's ability to let HoJ interrupt also take HoJ off of the global cooldown. That change will require new tech, so it's not something you're likely to see anytime soon, but you can know that it's in our long term plans. Again, we don't think the interrupt issue is a critical problem that must be solved today. The rotation one in the previous paragraph is a bigger deal.

I have to add the standard no promises clause to all of the above, because I have learned that I need to do that. 

_I'm sorry I disagree with people here, but I don't like bieng GCD locked, its not fun, its not a test of skill, its a test of your ability to get your rotation into muscle memory and alternate CS with other abilities. I see no reason that cast random doesn't fill in the second half of our rotation as it stands... _
We agree, Llowelyn. Our hope is that the changes I described above still provide some gaps without crossing the line into too many unpredictable gaps, which is it how it felt for a lot of paladins. I do have concerns that several months from now we're going to see "Stop making me use Judgement! I don't have the GCDs to use it, and I CAN'T delay Crusader Strike, or I am missing out on Holy Power generation and my threat goes to pot!"

*Inquisition*
We like Inquisition as an ability for Protection. It means that all your Holy Power doesn't automatically go to Shield of the Righteous. You might sometimes be able to have both layered now. That was a concern we had, but it also may prove interesting as long as one isn't always the right choice and as long as paladins don't start complaining when they don't have enough Holy Power generation to always power both. 

*Hammer of the Righteous/Crusader Strike Cooldown*
Crusader Strike - 3 sec cooldown. Hammer of the Righteous - 3 sec cooldown. Cooldown shared for both.

*Hammer of the Righteous scaling*
We realized that the AE portion of Hammer of the Righteous didn't scale with Vengeance. While it's true that Prot paladins gain some spell power, they get it from Strength, not the attack power provided by Vengeance. We changed Hammer to scale with attack power, which should mean it hits harder with Vengeance. That will provide some of the damage boost you are looking for.

News Source


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 6, 2010)

Zubasa said:


> Sadly, since so many people hate Res they are nerfing it further.
> Res will only affect players and pets in 4.0.
> 
> About tanking for non-tank specs....
> ...



I don't mean Tank talents in non-tanking Trees. I mean that Off Spec should be able to Off Tank. In Vanilla I did it all the time on my Warrior. Tanked numerous fights in BWL, Tanked numerous fights in AQ40, And 1 in Naxx, all as Fury. And I even remember going to a ZG on my Feral Druid, but they needed a Healer, and I had a pretty damn good healing set. But then we lost a DPS and gained a Healer, so I went DPS. Then we lost a Tank and gained a DPS, so I went Tank, and this was back when Druids had 0 itemization for Tanking and could be crit. I was 3rd Tank on the final ZG boss, and I out aggro'd both our Prot Warrs and MT'd it. And when I was healing I was only a few percent behind the Resto Druid, and when I was DPS I was on Top of the Meter. 

I just think that classes should be able to be played to their fullest. And once they added in Dual Specs, that put true Hybrids to their Death. Now you have to actually switch the spec for your raid to even consider it.


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## Zubasa (Oct 6, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> I don't mean Tank talents in non-tanking Trees. I mean that Off Spec should be able to Off Tank. In Vanilla I did it all the time on my Warrior. Tanked numerous fights in BWL, Tanked numerous fights in AQ40, And 1 in Naxx, all as Fury. And I even remember going to a ZG on my Feral Druid, but they needed a Healer, and I had a pretty damn good healing set. But then we lost a DPS and gained a Healer, so I went DPS. Then we lost a Tank and gained a DPS, so I went Tank, and this was back when Druids had 0 itemization for Tanking and could be crit. I was 3rd Tank on the final ZG boss, and I out aggro'd both our Prot Warrs and MT'd it. And when I was healing I was only a few percent behind the Resto Druid, and when I was DPS I was on Top of the Meter.
> 
> I just think that classes should be able to be played to their fullest. And once they added in Dual Specs, that put true Hybrids to their Death. Now you have to actually switch the spec for your raid to even consider it.


You also need to remember that only warriors were allowed to tank in 40 man raids back then. All the other hybrids end up being heal bots.
In TBC as a Pally tank I do end up healing the raid half the time. Back then guilds just simply won't allow any non-optimal playstyles.
Before TBC gear isn't as big an issue so to speak, but since TBC blizzard bumped up item levels dramatically thus all Raids are tune with that in mind. 
WotLK is just ridiculous with all the 10 and 25 man normal vs hard modes. Blizz end up making effectively 6 tiers of gear in terms of item level, and raids are also tuned with that in mind.
When raids are tune all around gear and spec, you just can't have the same off-spec tanks anymore.

Blizzard stated that they only want off-spec tanks to tank 5-mans and no more.
So it is pretty much impossible in the forseeable future.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 6, 2010)

Yeah, there was no item optimization for Druid or Pally Tanks. But that even says more about an Offspec Warrior tanking in the harder raids. And Offspec tanking just will never be back, because of Dual spec, and thats what I Hate. They want to punish people because they are playing a class that has another Tree that does something well, but if they don't enjoy that Tree, then why are they getting punished for it? In a 25 man raid at max you usually bring 3 tanks, 5 heals, and then dps to fill. So about 10% of the raid is tanks, 20% is heals, and 70% is DPS. So they are punishing a massive percentage of people, and telling them to go Tank or Heal, but in reality, even if more people wanted to do it, there just isnt as many slots to fill as you want the DPS to down things quickly, and the better everyone gets, the less heals come and the more DPS, just seems like they are working backwards.

Raids don't struggle to get tanks and heals, it's 5 mans, so the Pure priority over Hybrid is just crap and why I won't play a Hybrid even though Warrior and Druid are 2 of my favorite classes. And I preffer Plate Armor, but there is 0 Plate classes that are Pures, so that throws that out the window


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## v12dock (Oct 6, 2010)

A extremely geared pally was absolutely unstoppable


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## BondExtreme (Oct 6, 2010)

v12dock said:


> A extremely geared pally was absolutely unstoppable



Still no match for a geared discipline priest to a PvP point a view.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 7, 2010)

Why is it all these news updates are about Pallys, I rarely see mention of other classes, Pally Tanking, Pally GCD's, Pally Abilities?


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## f22a4bandit (Oct 7, 2010)

I don't understand either, Kurgan. It'd be nice to at least see some damn Druid stuff so I can get interested in Cataclysm as it might actually draw me back to the game.


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## BondExtreme (Oct 7, 2010)

*Class Update*

*Death Knight*
*Blood*
Blood Presence now increases threat by 200%, up from 125%.

*Druid*
*Feral*
Bear Form now increases threat by 200%, up from 125%.

*Hunter*
*Survival*
Snake Trap, Explosive Trap, Freezing Trap, Ice Trap, Immolation Trap now last 1 min, up from 30 sec.
Trap Launcher now costs 20 Focus, down from 30 Focus.
Wyvern Sting now costs 10 Focus, down from 35 Focus.

*Pet Abilities*
Acid Spit (Worm) no longer costs focus.

*Paladin*
*Holy*
Divine Light base healing increased by 10%
Flash of Light base healing increased by 10%
Holy Light base healing increased by 10%
Holy Shock base healing increased by 10%
Walk in the Light (Passive) now increases healing by 15%, up from 10%.

*Protection*
Righteous Fury now increases threat by 200%, up from 125%.

*Warlock *
*Destruction*
Improved Soul Fire effect now has a 15 sec cooldown, down from 30 sec.
Conflagrate now deals fire damage equal to 60% of your Immolate's periodic damage on the target, down from 100%.

*Warrior*
*Protection*
Defensive Stance now increases threat by 200%, up from 125%.

News Souce



1Kurgan1 said:


> Why is it all these news updates are about Pallys, I rarely see mention of other classes, Pally Tanking, Pally GCD's, Pally Abilities?



Paladin's are one of the classes that needed a big update as the entire community was basically complaining. For instance, holy needed a HUGE overhaul. All it ever caused the healer was boredom. All they ever did was spam the same heal. Nothing much more. The Paladin update was much needed. I couldn't less for them though since I would never role a paladin.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 7, 2010)

I've had every healer to max level but a Priest, I felt they were all boring, LOL. The only healing I have ever liked is playing a Tempest of Set in Age of Conan, that was extremely fun.


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## Zubasa (Oct 7, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Why is it all these news updates are about Pallys, I rarely see mention of other classes, Pally Tanking, Pally GCD's, Pally Abilities?





f22a4bandit said:


> I don't understand either, Kurgan. It'd be nice to at least see some damn Druid stuff so I can get interested in Cataclysm as it might actually draw me back to the game.


Because Paladins are getting the biggest changes in playstyle, more so than any other class.
They get a completely new resource system and all the abilities and talents that goes with it.
Blizzard is determined to stop facerolling once and for all for ret, and they try to make Holy less boring.


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## entropy13 (Oct 7, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> Paladin's are one of the classes that needed a big update as the entire community was basically complaining. For instance, holy needed a HUGE overhaul. All it ever caused the healer was boredom. *All they ever did was spam the same heal.* Nothing much more. The Paladin update was much needed. I couldn't less for them though since I would never role a paladin.



Flash of Light spam lol

Sometimes I make it a Holy Light spam, so there's longer time between pressing the hotkey (since it also heals a lot more of HP)

That's why although my paladin started out as holy I eventually switched to retri


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## v12dock (Oct 7, 2010)

Ret and holy = faceroll the keyboard


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## Zubasa (Oct 7, 2010)

v12dock said:


> Ret and holy = faceroll the keyboard


Holy don't even faceroll the keyboard, a mouse macro will do.... :shadedshu


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## v12dock (Oct 7, 2010)

Zubasa said:


> Holy don't even faceroll the keyboard, a mouse macro will do.... :shadedshu



lol "rest your eyes" and click... I fell asleep in a raid once


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 7, 2010)

Zubasa said:


> Because Paladins are getting the biggest changes in playstyle, more so than any other class.
> They get a completely new resource system and all the abilities and talents that goes with it.
> Blizzard is determined to stop facerolling once and for all for ret, and they try to make Holy less boring.



Then why don't they change Mages? Almost anyone I know just uses a Logitech mouse and Macros their main attack to scroll up, then 2 other buttons for some buff or spell. Then just roll mouse up and since Logitechs spin forever, they just spam that spell without having to do anything, just buff now and then and change target. Much more boring than Ret.


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## BondExtreme (Oct 7, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Then why don't they change Mages?



But they are getting a very nice update. Just not as big as the Paldadin's.


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## Kreij (Oct 7, 2010)

With the release of WotLK in China, WoW has surpassed 12 million subscribers.

Just thought you WoW fans might find that of interest.


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## BondExtreme (Oct 7, 2010)

Kreij said:


> With the release of WotLK in China, WoW has surpassed 12 million subscribers.
> 
> Just thought you WoW fans might find that of interest.



Hehe thank you, Kreij. Was getting ready to post the news. lol

*WORLD OF WARCRAFT® SUBSCRIBER BASE REACHES 12 MILLION WORLDWIDE*

News Source

It's interesting how they managed to obtain 12 million when they still have a crap load of people coming back right when Cataclysm comes out.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 7, 2010)

Kreij said:


> With the release of WotLK in China, WoW has surpassed 12 million subscribers.
> 
> Just thought you WoW fans might find that of interest.



Funny thing is, is even before that, China made up about 6 million subs, meaning China had more subs than the rest of the entire world... I mean that still makes WoW extremely popular having 5 million other fans, but puts it into perspective as the other big MMO's didn't hit such a big fanbase in Asia.


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## olithereal (Oct 8, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Then why don't they change Mages? Almost anyone I know just uses a Logitech mouse and Macros their main attack to scroll up, then 2 other buttons for some buff or spell. Then just roll mouse up and since Logitechs spin forever, they just spam that spell without having to do anything, just buff now and then and change target. Much more boring than Ret.



Yeah, PvE mage in WotLK was ridiculous, especially arcane...but they are getting major changes in Cata; might wanna have a look at those videos. Fire and Frost looks like they'll be really fun in PvE, and of course in PvP as they have always been. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjhdJedV4-Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3HbjJcc1Oc&feature=channel


----------



## BondExtreme (Oct 10, 2010)

*News Update - Patch 4.0.1!*

*Is Patch 4.0.1 this week?*
"Yes, most likely. I'm still trying to get a confirmation on that but really, It's not like it's going to happen on october 19th a few days before Blizzcon. The super mega awesome info compilation for the patch should be available soon, except if I hear that the patch has been delayed."

*Road to 4.0.1 - WoWTal v2!*
"WoWTal.com is (finally) updated with a couple of much-needed features and should be ready for Patch 4.0.1 and Cataclysm. It's theorycrafting time!
Cataclysm/4.0.1 Glyphs are finally supported.
Masteries/Primary spells are supported.
Interface has been cleaned up.
The header and the ad slot are gone. (We didn't even have ads anyway)"

*Road to 4.0.1 - Glyphs Preview*
(See news source below)

*Blizzcon 48-Hour Sale Delayed*
We are still in the process of resolving some issues that are preventing the 48-hour sale for BlizzCon attendees from beginning today as originally scheduled. The sale has been pushed back by one day to begin Sunday, October 10, at 10:00 a.m. PDT. It will now run 60 hours and end at 11:59 p.m. PDT on Tuesday, October 12. The 48-hour sale for Virtual Ticket Holders is still scheduled to begin October 13 at 10 a.m. PDT.

Thank you for your patience and we look forward to seeing you with your items at BlizzCon!

News Souce


----------



## v12dock (Oct 11, 2010)

Patch 4.0.1 on live servers this week
We have a long maintenance, official previews everywhere, and a couple of information confirming the patch on my side. Patch is this week, enjoy!

This post is currently being updated with more things, check back often!


----------



## BondExtreme (Oct 12, 2010)

Yeah just came back to the game today. Was so happy too since I haven't played for 8 months.  Wanted to check the game out the day before the patch. 

But yeah, all servers, including mine, just got kicked off. Servers are down for a LONG time people... Hold on because it's going to be a looong time most likely. It probably won't come up till 7-8PM EST....


----------



## ufgy20 (Oct 12, 2010)

olithereal said:


> Yeah, PvE mage in WotLK was ridiculous, especially arcane...but they are getting major changes in Cata; might wanna have a look at those videos. Fire and Frost looks like they'll be really fun in PvE, and of course in PvP as they have always been.
> 
> To say i have Watched Totalhalibut's videos on youtube like a hawk and mages got some new stuff coming their way.. and its looking like frost mike actually do some better damage compared to the other spec choices.. not on even grounds but fairly close... im updating myself with new info on cata about once every hour  getting impatient for the release.. i just hope they get it right this time.. having high hopes will lead to my long downfall...


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## v12dock (Oct 12, 2010)

Well today is the patch day I hope everyone is all patched up waiting for the servers to come back online. I also think they included all there DX11 features they wanted to add with this patch.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 13, 2010)

Wow, locks got beefed. I didn't have the haste to go Affliction before, but reforging gear is awesome and I now have 955 haste unbuffed. So I specced Destro and Affliction and tried Affliction. Before as Destro (my main spec) I could hit about 6800 dps, and my first shot as Affliction without mods and a bunch of other debuffs on the dummy, I knocked out 7600 dps, I was clipping the end of my own dots and such, far from a perfect rotation, but amazing numbers. But then I went back to my good old destro and ripped out 8400 dps... same gear and 1600 more dps, amazing! Gonna try Demo here in a sec.


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## CrackerJack (Oct 13, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Wow, locks got beefed. I didn't have the haste to go Affliction before, but reforging gear is awesome and I now have 955 haste unbuffed. So I specced Destro and Affliction and tried Affliction. Before as Destro (my main spec) I could hit about 6800 dps, and my first shot as Affliction without mods and a bunch of other debuffs on the dummy, I knocked out 7600 dps, I was clipping the end of my own dots and such, far from a perfect rotation, but amazing numbers. But then I went back to my good old destro and ripped out 8400 dps... same gear and 1600 more dps, amazing! Gonna try Demo here in a sec.



destro is really awesome, i gained about ~1.5k more dps on the old rotation. but then when i used new..ish i gained another 1k.

on my other toons i have got to mess awhole lot with... druid gained about 5k more hp (tank) offspec is cat, but didn't have time to look at it. my mage got a nice boost in burst dmg also, but haven't played him in so long that i can't really compare. rogue, eh about the same for me but all did with him is bg/arena. hunter.... OMG that own now, i flip out when i was doing 4k dps on boss target in pvp gear from 3 seasons ago. warrior, blah his ally. heard they got some nice things, more towards fury. shaman, restro got a nice boost, few spell were renamed. that's all my 80s lol. now on ptr i did lock and pally, pally was nice at heals but ret has more complex rotation, and i could only get 4k dps on dummy (no chants/ gems) i just don't understand why old might is now might/wisdom combine. but i guess it would be nice in some cases. but my 28 pally lost plea and two seals... just to gain holy shock. lol wtf ok


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 13, 2010)

Just did 7400 dps as Demo, so all 2 specs over 7k dps, 1 over 8k, but Demo might be the hardest spec to play in the game now. Not all these buttons are in the constant rotation, but I was using a 12 button rotation... Between 2 pet attacks, metamorph, hand, dots, casts, pet buff, and no trinks. Some macros could cut that down to maybe 8 or 9 buttons, but thats a freaking ton, I will be staying away from that spec for sure.


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## v12dock (Oct 13, 2010)

woohoo lets bring challenge to the game


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## Frick (Oct 13, 2010)

Maybe I should buy some more time next week and see what they did to my hunter.


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## v12dock (Oct 13, 2010)

Frick said:


> Maybe I should buy some more time next week and see what they did to my hunter.


Do it! I heard some hunters are up to 80% crit chance

Wow disc priest are awesome, massive heals, awesome glyphs, and with both my shields it absorbs 14500~ dmg


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## BondExtreme (Oct 13, 2010)

v12dock said:


> Do it! I heard some hunters are up to 80% crit chance
> 
> Wow disc priest are awesome, massive heals, awesome glyphs, and with both my shields it absorbs 14500~ dmg



Yeah. I am loving all of my holy spec changes. Chakra is just so awesome though! When a priest will put Holy Word: Sanctuary down, you will be amazed LOL. Especially if you have the spell detail all the way up. 

Oh and btw, did anyone notice the new graphic changes/upgrades added in the patch? Water and sun beams! WOO! hehe


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## CrackerJack (Oct 13, 2010)

just tested destro lock again  me still likes.. 6.7k dps but my fav spec demo so hope to test it out soon


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 13, 2010)

Demo is like homework, be ready to break out some macro's, you basically use every spell that you can. Since you use both Shadow Bolt and Incin, and now you can use Curse of Elements + Bane of Agony/Doom, Then Corruption, Metamorph, 2 Demon Attacks, Immo, Demon Buff, Trink, Hand of Guldan, Soulfire, and I think a few other things, but maybe not as that seems to be 13 spells right there, will also use life tap and some other util things, lots of hotkeys.


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## DannibusX (Oct 13, 2010)

So I was on my way home last night to install the new patch and discovered that someone in my home neglected to pay the power bill.

I was so pissed.

It's a good thing I live on my own because I could have kicked someone's ass.  I really wish my utility didn't bill bi-monthly so I could actually remember to pay the bill


----------



## Kreij (Oct 13, 2010)

DannibusX said:


> So I was on my way home last night to install the new patch and discovered that someone in my home neglected to pay the power bill.
> 
> I was so pissed.
> 
> It's a good thing I live on my own because I could have kicked someone's ass.  I really wish my utility didn't bill bi-monthly so I could actually remember to pay the bill



Why don't you set it for auto-pay, so you don't have to worry about it?


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## DannibusX (Oct 13, 2010)

I don't think I have that option.  My utility service is archaic, they just started accepting online payments within the last year or so.

I'm going to be checking my options when they open for business this morning.

MCRL is right.  Pooping in the dark sucks.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to downloading this patch and checking the talent changes.  I'm still on the fence about picking up the expansion, but I found out yesterday that I'm looking at a possible $9 per hour cut in pay so WoW may be the only thing I can afford to do in the near future.


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## Hybrid_theory (Oct 13, 2010)

DannibusX said:


> So I was on my way home last night to install the new patch and discovered that someone in my home neglected to pay the power bill.
> 
> I was so pissed.
> 
> It's a good thing I live on my own because I could have kicked someone's ass.  I really wish my utility didn't bill bi-monthly so I could actually remember to pay the bill



Eh I found wow to be pretty broken anyway last night. When i went to eat food in northrend (where im leveling right now) would just sit down then stand up. LFG seems to be down, and none of my addons work . i miss my xperl and carbonite the most haha.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 13, 2010)

I think you should beat yourself down and send us pictures, lol. Some good sig qoutes from your above 2 posts.


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## DannibusX (Oct 13, 2010)

Hybrid_theory said:


> Eh I found wow to be pretty broken anyway last night. When i went to eat food in northrend (where im leveling right now) would just sit down then stand up. LFG seems to be down, and none of my addons work . i miss my xperl and carbonite the most haha.



Addons will be dead for a little while, so you'll need to ditch those.  That eating bug has been in the game for a while.  You may have luck deleting your WTF folder.  You'll have to reset all of your options though, but that's no biggie.

WoW's always broken after a patch.  I used to hop on the WoW forums to read all of the complaining on patch day.  "FIX YOUR DAMN SERVERS!!1!"

What class are you playing?


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## CrackerJack (Oct 13, 2010)

Servers are going thru restarts, to help fixes some issues.


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## Hybrid_theory (Oct 13, 2010)

DannibusX said:


> Addons will be dead for a little while, so you'll need to ditch those.  That eating bug has been in the game for a while.  You may have luck deleting your WTF folder.  You'll have to reset all of your options though, but that's no biggie.
> 
> WoW's always broken after a patch.  I used to hop on the WoW forums to read all of the complaining on patch day.  "FIX YOUR DAMN SERVERS!!1!"
> 
> What class are you playing?



Prot war, thank god for victory rush healing me up after mobs haha. Ive got an 80 prot war on laughing skull, fairly geared. but buddy told me to level on his server after a month break. 

Usually after a patch there would be lag, cause of all the people and what not, and some bugs. But this seems to be more bugs than lag.


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## entropy13 (Oct 13, 2010)

DannibusX said:


> MCRL is right. Pooping in the dark sucks.



Was that really all you'll remember him for? lol


----------



## DannibusX (Oct 13, 2010)

Yeah, but it's the final patch before the expansion.  It was the same way for the launch of BC and WotLK.  Sweeping changes to the core mechanics are going to bring bugs to the surface.  It's essentially the final beta test before the expansion launches.  There will be bugs then too.

It sucks, though, but Blizzard is good about such things.  Did you play when the game was launched in 2004?  It was nearly unplayable for almost a year because of bugs, lag and other issues.  Basically the growing pains all MMO's go through.  I had to go back to UO more than once because the WoW would be down more often than it was up.

I'm not sure what I'll be playing when the x-pac launches.  I have my Priest I've been playing since BC launched, but my original character, the Mage is an option.  I got too many alts though, I might run with one of them.


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## entropy13 (Oct 13, 2010)

So far I only have a Paladin and DK, but I have to change drastically my DK with the changes coming in Cata.


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## DannibusX (Oct 13, 2010)

entropy13 said:


> Was that really all you'll remember him for? lol



Is he dead?


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 13, 2010)

DannibusX said:


> t sucks, though, but Blizzard is good about such things.  Did you play when the game was launched in 2004?  It was nearly unplayable for almost a year because of bugs, lag and other issues.  Basically the growing pains all MMO's go through.  I had to go back to UO more than once because the WoW would be down more often than it was up.



It bothers me that other people seem to have forgotten this. I have now played numerous MMO launches and they all have their bugs, then people cry and leave the game to usually return to WoW. But I don't think they were there, or remember it's launch, because out of all the MMO launches I have played it, WoW's was the worst. I remember servers being down for days and tons of client crashes and server crashes and other random crap, it was horrible.


----------



## DannibusX (Oct 13, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> It bothers me that other people seem to have forgotten this. I have now played numerous MMO launches and they all have their bugs, then people cry and leave the game to usually return to WoW. But I don't think they were there, or remember it's launch, because out of all the MMO launches I have played it, WoW's was the worst. I remember servers being down for days and tons of client crashes and server crashes and other random crap, it was horrible.



Yeah, that's why I pay little mind to day one reviews of MMO's.  WoW's launch was atrocious, the same as any other.  WAR and AoC were essentially doomed from the start, even though both are great games.  It literally takes a year for a dev to squash bugs on that scale.

People have zero patience though.


----------



## entropy13 (Oct 13, 2010)

DannibusX said:


> Is he dead?



lol no, although it seems he's more active in gn now than here?


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 13, 2010)

DannibusX said:


> Yeah, that's why I pay little mind to day one reviews of MMO's.  WoW's launch was atrocious, the same as any other.  WAR and AoC were essentially doomed from the start, even though both are great games.  It literally takes a year for a dev to squash bugs on that scale.
> 
> People have zero patience though.



I loved AoC's launch, it was fine till I hit level 55, if they had been faster patching in higher end leveling content, no one would have ever found an issue. For the servers to not crash on day 1 is a huge plus for me, and to be stable and not laggy. But once I ran out of quests on my main I rerolled because I was having a lot of fun, then I got to that point on my 2nd char and no new quests, I just couldn't do it anymore sadly.


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## v12dock (Oct 13, 2010)

Reforging is awesome! Mastory points plus disc... so much absorption


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## BondExtreme (Oct 13, 2010)

Can't wait till all these bugs are gone. I have noticed a lot of spell animations are bugged. 

For reforging, I haven't really looked into it. Need to start researching.


----------



## olithereal (Oct 14, 2010)

Am I the only one who thinks the Mage T11 looks _fucking_ bad ass?

Click on the set you want, then you'll be able to see the set in 3d on what ever race you want. I'll look delicious on my Undead.
http://cata.wowhead.com/blog=170693


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## BondExtreme (Oct 14, 2010)

Yeah when I saw mages I was like WOW awesome! hehe. Priest's look good but not the best like they always have in the past.
http://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2010/october/tier11priest.jpg


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## entropy13 (Oct 14, 2010)

Rogue's T11 is fugly.


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## olithereal (Oct 14, 2010)

Yeah Priest's sets have always looked good IMO. 

I'm thinking of leveling one when Cata releases..been wanting to get one up for a while now. They were pretty fun to play as Shadow back in Vanilla. How do you think Shadow Priest will do in Cata man?


----------



## BondExtreme (Oct 14, 2010)

olithereal said:


> I'm thinking of leveling one when Cata releases..been wanting to get one up for a while now. They were pretty fun to play as Shadow back in Vanilla. How do you think Shadow Priest will do in Cata man?



It's hard to tell but they aren't getting nerfed.. that's for sure. hehe. I believe we now rely off of these shadow orbs. They seem a little confusing now but am sure we will get the hang of them or how they will help. lol. At level 85 I am pretty sure we get mind spike and that will tell us how shadow priest's will do.


----------



## CrackerJack (Oct 14, 2010)

anyone else seen the druid glitch? 

OMG i'm loving my lock tho, doing 7k dps on dummy  Was in ICC 25m last night and all groups got disband.... we were on 1st boss. everyone hit, then boom disband! but all good i did a 11k burst off the bat. 

@1Kurgan1, hey has your dps from seed drop? mine seems like it's drop... alot! then i started using rain of fire, and was doing better than the ppl just spamming seed.

Prot Pally= OP IMO 
Bear= trash, having swipe and maul on a cd is really dumb. i kept losing threat. and there new move isn't much. just another single threat


----------



## zithe (Oct 15, 2010)

my dps in enhance dropped by 25%. ><

Heals in resto are amazing though. 1100 mp5, too!  All that time rolling on spirit gear paid off.XD


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 15, 2010)

CrackerJack said:


> @1Kurgan1, hey has your dps from seed drop? mine seems like it's drop... alot! then i started using rain of fire, and was doing better than the ppl just spamming seed.



I haven't hit any raid yet, but I wouldn't be surprised, Cata they are trying to lower AoE DPS and focus more on single target, which isn't bad at all for Locks. I really wanna hit ICC25 though, I was able to pull right around 13k before the patch on almost all bosses, want to crack 15k and I hear Fester might even be able to break 20k+.


----------



## CrackerJack (Oct 15, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> I haven't hit any raid yet, but I wouldn't be surprised, Cata they are trying to lower AoE DPS and focus more on single target, which isn't bad at all for Locks. I really wanna hit ICC25 though, I was able to pull right around 13k before the patch on almost all bosses, want to crack 15k and I hear Fester might even be able to break 20k+.



yeah i heard there nerfing locks somehow, figure it would be AoE. which i agree, they never had AoE problems. They just lack on the single target factor.



zithe said:


> my dps in enhance dropped by 25%. ><
> 
> Heals in resto are amazing though. 1100 mp5, too!  All that time rolling on spirit gear paid off.XD



yeah my resto is awesome too, i never oom... never really did before lol


----------



## Frizz (Oct 15, 2010)

Just got back into the game, using a DK at the moment and... 2 Handed frost DPS is back... woot!!!

I'm glad they got rid of arm pen, it was such a confusing stat to have over STR and AP. Gearing is going to be much more simpler too . 

Although I sense an array of nerfs to be released before or after CATA gets released.


----------



## entropy13 (Oct 15, 2010)

Never really tried 2h frost dps, always kept it simple with a big 1h weap and blood. Although I tried out plague already, in preparation for blood becoming more suitable for tanking in cata


----------



## BondExtreme (Oct 15, 2010)

CrackerJack said:


> yeah my resto is awesome too, i never oom... never really did before lol



hehe. When Cataclysm hits with the new gear, you will. Especially if you don't watch your mana


----------



## Frizz (Oct 15, 2010)

entropy13 said:


> Never really tried 2h frost dps, always kept it simple with a big 1h weap and blood. Although I tried out plague already, in preparation for blood becoming more suitable for tanking in cata



What I do mean is NOT dual wield, I mean one badass mace or sword for frost. 2-Hander not 2 one handers.

I was sick of carrying puny swords as a DK  ... although bloodvenom is quite sexy.


----------



## Easo (Oct 17, 2010)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq4Y7ztznKc&feature=channel

And the tears of joy shall be spilled!


----------



## v12dock (Oct 17, 2010)

That is a sick Cintematic


----------



## DannibusX (Oct 17, 2010)

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand that cinematic just got me excited about the expansion again.


----------



## olithereal (Oct 17, 2010)

Fucking bad ass cinematic!


----------



## BondExtreme (Oct 18, 2010)

Hehe wow!


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 21, 2010)

New Catalyst Profile update for DX11 http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/crossfirex-app-profiles.aspx


----------



## f22a4bandit (Oct 21, 2010)

I think I just felt something wet in my pants with that cinematic...Good thing my friend has some scrolls of resurrection waiting for me.


----------



## zithe (Oct 21, 2010)

People whine so much about classes being OP or neutered now. I don't think they realize there's 5 levels to go before cata raiding..


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## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 21, 2010)

I'm not too worried about it, but it makes me sad that on my old Warrior, when he was in his Prime (December 08 4 Piece Valorous with Armageddon + other junk) I would do like 6k dps on the first VOA boss in 25 man, just went there yesterday on him and whipped out 4k... but yet I could do 5.5k on the single trash adds?


----------



## zithe (Oct 21, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> I'm not too worried about it, but it makes me sad that on my old Warrior, when he was in his Prime (December 08 4 Piece Valorous with Armageddon + other junk) I would do like 6k dps on the first VOA boss in 25 man, just went there yesterday on him and whipped out 4k... but yet I could do 5.5k on the single trash adds?



My friend went from doing 12k to 4k on his warrior. He just abandoned him in favor of his warlock.


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 21, 2010)

Yeah, I found that kinda funny too, my Warr is only 4.2k gs, old school gear. And another friends Warr is like 5.4k, but we do the same DPS on target dummies now, and he was trying to argue with how I setup my new gear.... He didn't like it when I broke it down that I have signifigantly worse gear, yet do the same amount of DPS.

But yeah, Locks own now, loving Destro on mine, after working on my rotation, and using my trinkets and everything I can now hit about 9.4k on dummies, haven't even stepped in a raid, can't imagine what would happen with buffs and flasks. I use to do 6.5k on dummies and like 13k in raids, should be insanity now.


----------



## zithe (Oct 21, 2010)

I just abandoned enhancement on my shaman. I saw one of my guildies pulling 19k single target on his frost dk with a 5900gs.


----------



## animal007uk (Oct 22, 2010)

The hole game is screwed up since the stupid patch, freezes / crashes and D/C every time you try to do things.

I do like my warlock more now tho.


----------



## Zubasa (Oct 22, 2010)

Am I the only one that ditched my warlock and actually play my warrior?


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 22, 2010)

Zubasa said:


> Am I the only one that ditched my warlock and actually play my warrior?



Yes, though I been tinkering on my old Warrior, but I gained almost 3k dps on the dummies on my lock, and Warriors lost a ton.


----------



## f22a4bandit (Oct 22, 2010)

I haven't played since patch 3.3.3, and the stupid downloader is going way too slow. I'm averaging maybe 20kbps. Funny as how the first hour it downloads between 200 and 300kbps and then falls off the face of the earth.


----------



## Frick (Oct 27, 2010)

f22a4bandit said:


> I haven't played since patch 3.3.3, and the stupid downloader is going way too slow. I'm averaging maybe 20kbps. Funny as how the first hour it downloads between 200 and 300kbps and then falls off the face of the earth.



Wierd, I almost maxed out my 100mbit-line on the download. 

Anyway, I've been playing a couple of hours now, and I must say I'm dissapointed in at least two things (I actually had to stop playing to post this):

1. We are all retarded. As in "Best used" in the tool tips. Really? The game is even more dumbed down.

2. The Warlock's DoT spells now do not have any way to tell the damage. Corruption tooltip: "Causes shadow damage over time. Keep active on your enemy during combat." And what about Demon Armor: "Increases your armor and health gained from spells. Keep this spell active at all times." This is seriously bad. And the golden Searing Pain: "Causes moderate Fire damage at moderate range but causes the target to be very angry with you. Best used with Soulburn." ....
..
.
Very angry with you? Moderate damage? I WANT NUMBERS!!!!!

Or is there a way to actually know how much damage you're causing? It's so retarded I wish I didn't buy that extra month.




EDIT: Ok nvm, I found the "Beginners Tooltip" now. I can't believe I didn't look there in those hours played.


----------



## Zubasa (Oct 27, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Yes, though I been tinkering on my old Warrior, but I gained almost 3k dps on the dummies on my lock, and Warriors lost a ton.


I guess that have to do with you being fury.
(Fury also loses the T10 2-piece bonus along with armor pen.)
Arms is actually viable as a DPS spec once again.

Edit: Aren't they dropping a patch to fix the DPSers in these couple of days?


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 27, 2010)

Frick said:


> 2. The Warlock's DoT spells now do not have any way to tell the damage. Corruption tooltip: "Causes shadow damage over time. Keep active on your enemy during combat." And what about Demon Armor: "Increases your armor and health gained from spells. Keep this spell active at all times." This is seriously bad. And the golden Searing Pain: "Causes moderate Fire damage at moderate range but causes the target to be very angry with you. Best used with Soulburn." ....(



Like you said you found the tooltip options, but those numbers were also vanity numbers before anyways, base numbers that didn't take into account spellpower and never really reflected the power of the spell.



Zubasa said:


> I guess that have to do with you being fury.
> (Fury also loses the T10 2-piece bonus along with armor pen.)
> Arms is actually viable as a DPS spec once again.
> 
> Edit: Aren't they dropping a patch to fix the DPSers in these couple of days?



Warriors got buffed sometime in the last week or so, so it's better now, I haven't gone back and tested on a dummy, I'd expect a better result now, but my warrs only like 4.2k gs, so nothing amazing.


----------



## Zubasa (Oct 27, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Like you said you found the tooltip options, but those numbers were also vanity numbers before anyways, base numbers that didn't take into account spellpower and never really reflected the power of the spell.


The new tooltips now actually do tell the damage with spell power taken into account.


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 27, 2010)

Zubasa said:


> The new tooltips now actually do tell the damage with spell power taken into account.



Interesting, I never even bothered with tooltips before, so I'll have to take a look now, some of the Lock changes are weird. Now Conflag is by far the hardest hitting spell, just with self buffs I crit for almost 25k with it on the Raid Target Dummy... Yes the previous hardest hitting (chaos bolt) doesn't even compare, infact it seems to only be as good as Incinerate now?


----------



## Reventon (Oct 27, 2010)

Okay when the fuck does Cata come out again I'm dying over this shit it's Dec. 7th correct?


----------



## animal007uk (Oct 27, 2010)

yup supose to be dec7th.


----------



## Reventon (Oct 27, 2010)

Ugh, Tuesday. I'm skipping school for sure then.


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 27, 2010)

Yeah just looked, tooltips havent changed, still shows damage with no sp added in, and some spells like Conflag say things like "high fire damage". And holy crap I just Conflagrated the Headless Horseman for 28505...


----------



## Zubasa (Oct 27, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Interesting, I never even bothered with tooltips before, so I'll have to take a look now, some of the Lock changes are weird. Now Conflag is by far the hardest hitting spell, just with self buffs I crit for almost 25k with it on the Raid Target Dummy... Yes the previous hardest hitting (chaos bolt) doesn't even compare, infact it seems to only be as good as Incinerate now?


That is because with glyphs and talents immolate does a good ton of damage.
Conflag damage has always been based on immolate damage.
4.0.1 removes the dot from Conflag and adds that damage in to the original hit, thats why it hits like a freakin train. 
Chaos Bolt serves as a more efficient (uses less mana) and and harder hitting Incinerate. (higher base damage and eats more SP)
It does hit quite a bit harder than Incinerate on raid bosses (cannot be resisted /absorbed at all), and it also casts faster.


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Oct 27, 2010)

My Chaos Bolts use to crit for over 20k self buffed, now I'm lucky to hit 15k. :/


----------



## Zubasa (Oct 30, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Yeah just looked, tooltips havent changed, still shows damage with no sp added in, and some spells like Conflag say things like "high fire damage". And holy crap I just Conflagrated the Headless Horseman for 28505...


You have to set it in the Blizzard UI options.
It is kind of buggy right now, some spells work and some doesn't.
I am sure that Chaos bolt don't do 8k+ base damage.....


----------



## v12dock (Nov 23, 2010)

Get ready for the biggest change you ever witnessed in World of Warcraft, and enjoy! 

Opening cinematic is just epic.....


----------



## bbmarley (Nov 23, 2010)

us poor rogues got some buffs this patch only waited forever
all the rest got nerfs LOLOLOL

yes the cinematic was good seen it at blizzcon too =D

i do hope the stupid invasion stuff end in the citys now because its really anoying


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Nov 23, 2010)

v12dock said:


> Get ready for the biggest change you ever witnessed in World of Warcraft, and enjoy!
> 
> Opening cinematic is just epic.....



I suppose it is the largest overall change, but gameplay wise, the change from 40 and 20 mans to 25 and 10's, I think had a much larger effect on the community.


----------



## Papahyooie (Nov 24, 2010)

I would just like to say, the DK changes suck. I loved my blood dps and frost tanking. Rotations make NO sense now. They were perfectly logical before.


----------



## Frizz (Dec 1, 2010)

Papahyooie said:


> I would just like to say, the DK changes suck. I loved my blood dps and frost tanking. Rotations make NO sense now. They were perfectly logical before.



lol imho blood DPS was utter crap, I am glad they swapped it out as the 3rd best raiding DPS spec for frost two-handed (not dual wield) which was one of my favorite specs to play in Ulduar.

Rotations make sense to me so far, for frost DPS for example you don't need to use icy touch if you're specializing in frost instead you use howling blast (aoe) to inflict frost fever since it only uses 1 rune instead of 2 1x icy 1x unholy which is a big buff and distinguishes it from the other 2 trees, elitist jerks always have the best rotation written down on their website just copy and paste it into your mind and you're good to go.


EDIT: 6 more days.


----------



## Frick (Dec 1, 2010)

I don't like the goblin's new voices. They sounded better before imo. 

And I'm kinda pissed that the digital copy is €10 more than actually bying the game.


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 1, 2010)

bbmarley said:


> i do hope the stupid invasion stuff end in the citys now because its really anoying



it really is .. i can't do my wow benchmarks for vga reviews anymore
(once things have settled down in azeroth our benchmarking gnomes will be back to work)


----------



## Reefer86 (Dec 1, 2010)

try £15 more the retail


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Dec 1, 2010)

Must just be over there, here its the exact same price.


----------



## Frick (Dec 1, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Must just be over there, here its the exact same price.



Meh. 

Download through Blizz store is 34.95€, retail is 259 SEK (about 27€).


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Dec 1, 2010)

Yeah, those prices are high. It's $39.99 digital or in stores here.


----------



## Frizz (Dec 2, 2010)

Me thinks there should be a list on this thread for TPU'ers who play WoW on the first post! It could include Main Class, Server, Faction (including levels and specs would be pointless, too many changes overtime)!


----------



## Jaffakeik (Dec 2, 2010)

Why do they asking so much for some add-on its not even stande alone game its just add-on and costs like game its crazy i think even i dont play it.it feels little strange for me.I would never pay such money for mmorpg addon they should be for 0$ becuase you are paying monthly to them.


----------



## Frick (Dec 2, 2010)

Arciks said:


> Why do they asking so much for some add-on its not even stande alone game its just add-on and costs like game its crazy i think even i dont play it.it feels little strange for me.I would never pay such money for mmorpg addon they should be for 0$ becuase you are paying monthly to them.



The retail price in store are pretty much spot on for expansions, so I don't really mind.


----------



## Frizz (Dec 5, 2010)

Anyone else stuck in the Queue for battlenet account management? I am waiting to recharge my account again but apparently there is an 8 hour queue =_=


----------



## ShiBDiB (Dec 5, 2010)

Frick said:


> The retail price in store are pretty much spot on for expansions, so I don't really mind.



for some1 to get into the game right now.. officially.. its a pain in the balls.. ur spending between 75-100$$ for the base game and all the expansions... ontop of paying monthly


----------



## Reventon (Dec 5, 2010)

Not anymore. Vanilla and BC are now sold as a package for $20. Lich King is like $40 or whatever, that's $60. But yeah it will be $100 once Cataclysm comes out.


----------



## animal007uk (Dec 6, 2010)

Don't care how much it cost (im not paying lol) will be getting it tomoz at 6pm, Will be ready to play at 11.01pm, session on.


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Dec 6, 2010)

Reventon said:


> Not anymore. Vanilla and BC are now sold as a package for $20. Lich King is like $40 or whatever, that's $60. But yeah it will be $100 once Cataclysm comes out.



You can get The Battlechest (Vanilla + BC) + WotLK + Cata on Amazon for $85 right now. I swore the prices would be dropping everywhere else soon so you could get all  up to date for $80.


----------



## v12dock (Dec 6, 2010)

Tminus - 8 Hours and 41 Minutes.... And welcome to Cataclysm Europe!


----------



## animal007uk (Dec 6, 2010)

What a total fk up, cant even login to the shit now, i want me damn money back.


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 6, 2010)

animal007uk said:


> What a total fk up, cant even login to the shit now, i want me damn money back.



same ..


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 6, 2010)

omg


----------



## animal007uk (Dec 6, 2010)

I got the same as you W1zz, i just left it and now im finaly back on.


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 6, 2010)

going slooooooow


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 6, 2010)

*cry*


----------



## Josh154 (Dec 6, 2010)

Hey guys, i bought wow a while back when i was 12 and started playing it but quit as i didn't really get the game. I've been wanting to start playing the game again and i have seen all sorts of cataclysm advertisments on the tv and to be honest it looks pretty sweet  Now i read that this affects the whole world of warcraft and even from levels 1-60 it changes it all. Say i were to start over with a new account, and wanted cataclysm would i need the two expansion packs before it?


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 6, 2010)

thank god. finally i'm in!


----------



## Reventon (Dec 6, 2010)

Yep. Simple answer.

I want to get Cataclysm tonight at midnight really bad, but I have no ride, and I really need to do some homework today and tomorrow and I know if I get it I will play it non-stop, so probably not a good idea.


----------



## Reventon (Dec 6, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> thank god. finally i'm in!



Lolwut. You're playing it?


----------



## Josh154 (Dec 7, 2010)

Reventon said:


> Lolwut. You're playing it?



Their across the world from us


----------



## Frizz (Dec 7, 2010)

I wonder how many fresh players Cataclysm will bring in . I haven't played for a while and I'll most probably enter the expansion with as little as 200 gold, yay me. Anyone else got the remote auctioneer app for their iphone or android or whatever? It's quite godly!


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Dec 7, 2010)

I don't understand why EU gets in early, yet US has to wait till midnight Pacific time, meaning I can't play till 2am and people East coast can't play till 3 am.


----------



## NinkobEi (Dec 7, 2010)

so, catacylsm just released today? interesting! wonder if it'd be worth coming back to..


----------



## Frizz (Dec 7, 2010)

Ninkobwi said:


> so, catacylsm just released today? interesting! wonder if it'd be worth coming back to..



Hasn't released yet, bit more than 4 hours to go!


----------



## Brilford Wimley (Dec 7, 2010)

I've never played WOW. What are the odds of me buying it and enjoying it? 

I'm not here to bash, I'm just an FPS junkie who's looking to expand his horizons.


----------



## Frizz (Dec 7, 2010)

Brilford Wimley said:


> I've never played WOW. What are the odds of me buying it and enjoying it?
> 
> I'm not here to bash, I'm just an FPS junkie who's looking to expand his horizons.



It is the Counter-Strike of the MMORPG world  .. I'm pretty sure you only need to buy vanilla if you're starting from scratch and then move onto the next expansion after you reach the level cap. All content from Cataclysm except level 80-85 and the new races are accessible same goes for Death Knights and other races added from Burning Crusade and WOTLK.


----------



## Josh154 (Dec 7, 2010)

randomflip said:


> It is the Counter-Strike of the MMORPG world  .. I'm pretty sure you only need to buy vanilla if you're starting from scratch and then move onto the next expansion after you reach the level cap. All content from Cataclysm except level 80-85 and the new races are accessible same goes for Death Knights and other races added from Burning Crusade and WOTLK.



What's the vanilla you talk about? Just the original game?


----------



## Frizz (Dec 7, 2010)

Josh154 said:


> What's the vanilla you talk about? Just the original game?



Yep just original


----------



## Frick (Dec 7, 2010)

There is a trial you can try. It caps you to level 20 though.


----------



## Brilford Wimley (Dec 7, 2010)

Frick said:


> There is a trial you can try. It caps you to level 20 though.


Are there any limitations with the trial other than the level 20 cap? If I like the trial, can I buy it and continue where I left off in the trial?


----------



## BondExtreme (Dec 7, 2010)

Ugh! 2:14am here on the east coast.... 46 more minutes!!! Going a little crazy here....


----------



## Frick (Dec 7, 2010)

Brilford Wimley said:


> Are there any limitations with the trial other than the level 20 cap? If I like the trial, can I buy it and continue where I left off in the trial?



I don't think there are any more. and you can upgrade your account and play on.


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Dec 7, 2010)

Trial never has had a limit that stopped you from upgrading. What it did have before is, no channel talk, no whispers. Cap at 20, but you can upgrade to a full client.


----------



## Frizz (Dec 7, 2010)

IT HAS BEGUN......in logging into game server QQ


----------



## v12dock (Dec 7, 2010)

3 hours to get level 81, instant queue tank ftw


----------



## W1zzard (Dec 7, 2010)

queue only 900 on my server .. 1 hour wait .. yay


----------



## Josh154 (Dec 7, 2010)

Haha i have no clue what you guys are talking about.. But im really thinking about playing wow again! Haven't they done some upgrades recently that makes the game much more gpu dependant and uses sli?

In other words would my q6600 at 3.6 and two g92's in sli run everything on high except for shadows at 1920x1080?


----------



## animal007uk (Dec 7, 2010)

Even tho it sort of works the game don't officialy suport SLI or XFIRE.


----------



## Josh154 (Dec 7, 2010)

animal007uk said:


> Even tho it sort of works the game don't officialy suport SLI or XFIRE.



So if i wanted to play this game well id be best off selling my two cards and picking up one gtx 460 or a 470?


----------



## Marineborn (Dec 7, 2010)

yeah the game is horrible for multy gpu's bro, i have 3x4870 in my wifes computer just for shits and giggles and she got decent framrates. then i just left 1 4870, and she was pulling double to triple the framerates of all 3 cards


----------



## ShiBDiB (Dec 7, 2010)

im tempted to get into a retail wow.......


----------



## Reventon (Dec 8, 2010)

OMFG I WANT TO PLAY


----------



## bbmarley (Dec 8, 2010)

live from the us servers =D



goood fast way to lv brc 80-82 avg 10min clears takes couple of hours 
deepholm 82-83
uldum 83-84
twilight highlands for the home run =D

edit time to catch some zzz that was a long sit


----------



## v12dock (Dec 8, 2010)

Poor old shattered hand (one of the original servers) can't handle all this stress, its still running 486 tech 

Oh and I have seen like over 50 cataclysm commercials on tv today


----------



## Josh154 (Dec 8, 2010)

v12dock said:


> Poor old shattered hand (one of the original servers) can't handle all this stress, its still running 486 tech
> 
> Oh and I have seen like over 50 cataclysm commercials on tv today



Yeah i was out snowboarding at the ski resorts tonight and in the lobby i probably saw like 5 wow commercials when i was there.


----------



## copenhagen69 (Dec 8, 2010)

was this as earth shattering as they said it would be on the commercials?


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Dec 8, 2010)

v12dock said:


> Poor old shattered hand (one of the original servers) can't handle all this stress, its still running 486 tech
> 
> Oh and I have seen like over 50 cataclysm commercials on tv today



Yeah, I was 1027th in line to get on my server today...


----------



## Reventon (Dec 9, 2010)

My queue is 2015 -__-


----------



## entropy13 (Dec 9, 2010)

Hooray for low pop realms!


----------



## Frizz (Dec 9, 2010)

entropy13 said:


> Hooray for low pop realms!



Indubitably!


----------



## entropy13 (Dec 9, 2010)

Well technically it's medium pop now, but there's rarely a queue anyway lol


----------



## v12dock (Dec 9, 2010)

I thought I would share this.. 5 Mins on my server before Cataclysm release


----------



## ShiBDiB (Dec 9, 2010)

v12dock said:


> I thought I would share this.. 5 Mins on my server before Cataclysm release
> http://img.techpowerup.org/101209/Ddja091.jpg



default ui fail...


----------



## Frizz (Dec 9, 2010)

ShiBDiB said:


> default ui fail...



Hehe I like keeping it simple as well, here's my Worgen! Some people can do some crazy good things with their UI, it can pretty much be altered in anyway one would like.


----------



## entropy13 (Dec 9, 2010)

Too lazy to login right now, but I have an older screenshot of my UI:





Now THAT'S a great UI. Sucks right now though as they moved the chatbox so that there's some space below it FOR NO REASON AT ALL, so right now the chat window is a bit out of place in my UI (which is coehlui, which already includes a lot of other addons as well).


----------



## v12dock (Dec 9, 2010)

Addon UIs fail


----------



## ShiBDiB (Dec 9, 2010)

ive never played wow................... retail...

but I can problly still make a half decent mage.. heres a pic of my ui from a few months ago when i was super active and when wowcrack still existed.. Think this was a day after WOTLK got put on the server, was one of the first 80's in the server and the first in my guild. Think the raid is called the nexus or something, its been awhile.






I dont miss wow as much as I miss my guild... we had around 300 members but once wowcrack died we all slowly started disappearing . If any of u have ever played on crack or magicwow ally im sure uve heard of us. Nightmare Unending  was the VGM.

And yes.. i do have 187000 Gold.. it paid to be VGM in one of the top 3 ally guilds.


----------



## v12dock (Dec 9, 2010)

Halls of lightning, private server ftl...


----------



## Reventon (Dec 9, 2010)

Wtf is with all of this addon shit. I like the stuff Blizzard gave me, don't fuck with it. Only thing up in addition to default is Recount.


----------



## zithe (Dec 9, 2010)

Reventon said:


> Wtf is with all of this addon shit. I like the stuff Blizzard gave me, don't fuck with it. Only thing up in addition to default is Recount.



I don't let people raid unless they have DBM. Statbuster, too.


----------



## Frizz (Dec 9, 2010)

Reventon said:


> Wtf is with all of this addon shit. I like the stuff Blizzard gave me, don't fuck with it. Only thing up in addition to default is Recount.



What blizzard gave you is a template, altering that template to your preference is not fucking with it I assume lol. Anyway DBM, Recount, Omen, Atlasloot and maybe some Profession mods is pretty much all you need nowadays, in terms of the UI its all down to the user.

IMO without the addons it could be more challenging, but then again you're like a blind man on a wheelchair fighting off a dragon with your stick without these addons hahaha


----------



## NinkobEi (Dec 9, 2010)

should rename this thread to: "Excuses for reactivating your old WoW account"


----------



## ShiBDiB (Dec 10, 2010)

Ninkobwi said:


> should rename this thread to: "Excuses for reactivating your old WoW account"



haha im looking for an excuse to start a real one


----------



## Josh154 (Dec 10, 2010)

Im looking at starting wow again also  I've never really gotten into blizzard games but i told my mom today to get me sc2 for christmas so we will see if i get that. If i get sc2 i don't really wanna play wow so im gonna hold off till after christmas before deciding. I don't wish to be playing two mmorpg's because i know how addicting these games are and you just spend hours on them.


----------



## 1nf3rn0x (Dec 10, 2010)

Bah, I have the urge to play it again. My mate is currently using my account due to his one being hacked, and he has no problem me playing and he pays the subscription. He even gave me the cata disk, OH just another reason to start playing again! . I'm installing now btw


----------



## Stak (Dec 10, 2010)

i just made a WoW account a few days ago have level 8 rogue undead and level 7 human hunter. and this  game is more frun then i would ever expect.


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Dec 11, 2010)

zithe said:


> I don't let people raid unless they have DBM. Statbuster, too.



I think you mean Ratingbuster. I understand DBM, but there is no reason that Ratingbuster should be a required raid tool. I personally use it and it's nice to be able to compare your current item with a new one instantly. But not having it shouldn't be no raid invite.


----------



## Stak (Dec 11, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> I think you mean Ratingbuster. I understand DBM, but there is no reason that Ratingbuster should be a required raid tool. I personally use it and it's nice to be able to compare your current item with a new one instantly. But not having it shouldn't be no raid invite.



is that your car (avatar) if it is, congrats. nice car 

but i dont know what car it is.


----------



## NinkobEi (Dec 11, 2010)

downloading the client, farewell somewhat-mediocre social life. Do the worgens start at level 1? anyone know


----------



## BondExtreme (Dec 11, 2010)

Stak said:


> i just made a WoW account a few days ago have level 8 rogue undead and level 7 human hunter. and this  game is more frun then i would ever expect.



Just remember that the REAL fun starts at the highest level. That is where the end-game content is.


----------



## slyfox2151 (Dec 11, 2010)

Ninkobwi said:


> downloading the client, farewell somewhat-mediocre social life. Do the worgens start at level 1? anyone know



indeed they do start at level 1.


----------



## v12dock (Dec 12, 2010)

Instance are A LOT harder! Compared to wrath.. you actually need to CC 

Any who I seem to get some players that are still playing like its wrath and are pulling massive groups of mobs and wiping on every trash pull.. :shadedshu


----------



## BondExtreme (Dec 13, 2010)

^ Ugh yea. I am trying to only do runs now with my guild. Any pug I get, they are all morons. The groups pull without any CC and then the retard DPS and Tank yell at me because I can't heal through it and I go oom instantly.... 

Someone in my guild refers to those peeps as downs.. Heh, ok maybe I should leave that part out.


----------



## DannibusX (Dec 13, 2010)

I started a new character on the Tanaris server with a friend.  I decided since I raided as mage DPS for vanilla and healed as a priest through BC and Wrath that I would take up tanking as a warrior.

Made 36 in a couple of days and I am enjoying the new content and leveling experience.  It's so well done now.  I went Goblin of course, great race.


----------



## Reventon (Dec 13, 2010)

I'm 83 right now. Just started in Uldum not too long ago, love it. Want to be 85.

I must say though that I love the leveling in Cata. Normally I hate leveling, but it's fun in the new zones.



zithe said:


> I don't let people raid unless they have DBM. Statbuster, too.





randomflip said:


> What blizzard gave you is a template, altering that template to your preference is not fucking with it I assume lol. Anyway DBM, Recount, Omen, Atlasloot and maybe some Profession mods is pretty much all you need nowadays, in terms of the UI its all down to the user.
> 
> IMO without the addons it could be more challenging, but then again you're like a blind man on a wheelchair fighting off a dragon with your stick without these addons hahaha



I use DBM, AtlasLoot, Recount, and a few others, but no interface addons. Interface addons are fail.


----------



## BondExtreme (Dec 13, 2010)

Why are interface addons fail?

I use dominos and it's nice to literally place and customize your action bars wherever you want. It makes it more clean.


----------



## Reventon (Dec 14, 2010)

They are fail to me. Like I said, I like the way Blizzard set me up, don't fuck with it.


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Dec 14, 2010)

At least it's just your guys addons that are fail. Ever since I started playing WoW again (about 4 months ago) I been trying to hunt down massive memory leaks. It seems addons make it a bit worse, as does having Steam interface. But things like DBM are needed to raid. I even went so far as to put a brand new W7 on here and all new WoW, and the leaking is back. It really sucks, doubt I could raid as the higher stress the game puts out, the faster it goes, I can level for hours, but standing in just a capital city and I'll probably memory leak out and crash within 5 - 10 min.



Stak said:


> is that your car (avatar) if it is, congrats. nice car
> 
> but i dont know what car it is.



Yep, thats my wheels, got a lot of work into it. It's a 99 Pontiac Grand Prix GTX.


----------



## zithe (Dec 14, 2010)

I like the way blizzard set me up, too. However, I forget which pages I leave things on that I need in a bind. Having everything open to me can be helpful.


----------



## Reventon (Dec 14, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> At least it's just your guys addons that are fail. Ever since I started playing WoW again (about 4 months ago) I been trying to hunt down massive memory leaks. It seems addons make it a bit worse, as does having Steam interface. But things like DBM are needed to raid. I even went so far as to put a brand new W7 on here and all new WoW, and the leaking is back. It really sucks, doubt I could raid as the higher stress the game puts out, the faster it goes, I can level for hours, but standing in just a capital city and I'll probably memory leak out and crash within 5 - 10 min.



Same here. That crap pisses me off. Can't go in Org basically.


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Dec 14, 2010)

Reventon said:


> Same here. That crap pisses me off. Can't go in Org basically.



Also the fact that the game still crossfires like ass. Turning off Cat AI does nothing either. I been tempted to turn off my comp and yank out a videocard just to play the game decently, very disappointing.


----------



## ShiBDiB (Dec 14, 2010)

I'm so close to playing again.... just got mono so I cant do much anyway, cant even go to the gym ((, but ima hold out til bc2 vietnam and hopefully that keeps me occupied.


----------



## BondExtreme (Dec 14, 2010)

YES! My guild got to rank 2!!!! (Increased flight speed by 10%) ^_^
You can really tell the difference especially if you have 310% flying. 10% added to that equals to roughly 350% flying!


----------



## Zubasa (Dec 14, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> YES! My guild got to rank 2!!!! (Increased flight speed by 10%) ^_^
> You can really tell the difference especially if you have 310% flying. 10% added to that equals to roughly 350% flying!


Nope.
The flight speed is +310%
That is 410% * 1.1 = 451% speed.


----------



## ShogoXT (Dec 14, 2010)

Zubasa said:


> Nope.
> The flight speed is +310%
> That is 410% * 1.1 = 451% speed.



Im sorry, but I have already seen this talked about by a Blizzard rep. They use the 280% and 310% as addition for speed increases, so it would be 290% and 320%. It is not multiplicative.


----------



## BondExtreme (Dec 14, 2010)

huh? I already had 310 flying and when I got this guild perk, my speed went up to about 350 speed flying. I know because carbonite tells you exactly how fast you are flying.


----------



## ShiBDiB (Dec 14, 2010)

Either way your flying faster then everyone else... lets leave it at that


----------



## 1Kurgan1 (Dec 14, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> YES! My guild got to rank 2!!!! (Increased flight speed by 10%) ^_^
> You can really tell the difference especially if you have 310% flying. 10% added to that equals to roughly 350% flying!



Eh, I just bought my first 280% flying ever... And I been playing since Jan 05, and I had 7 level 80s, and after launch I was the most geared DPS warrior on my server, just broke 

Was the same in Vanilla, didn't get my epic ground till almost BC, I don't farm or do dailies, so it don't matter to me much.


----------



## v12dock (Dec 15, 2010)

310% + pally aura + guild perk is what im running around at


----------



## zithe (Dec 15, 2010)

It says 280% movement speed, not + 280% movement speed. Crusader aura doesn't stack with other speed increasing effects afaik. :\


----------



## Frizz (Dec 15, 2010)

Just got a BOE epic drop! I sold it for 15k and bought the Master Riding, It really does make a difference especially with our guild perk which brings it to about 320%. It is great for gathering and questing though yeah it is recommended to have two Crafting professions instead of 1x crafting 1x gathering for raiding so I probably won't be doing much of that anyways .


----------



## DannibusX (Dec 15, 2010)

DannibusX said:


> So I was on my way home last night to install the new patch and discovered that someone in my home neglected to pay the power bill.
> 
> I was so pissed.
> 
> It's a good thing I live on my own because I could have kicked someone's ass.  I really wish my utility didn't bill bi-monthly so I could actually remember to pay the bill



Good thing this thread exists.

Just reminded me to pay my power bill.


----------



## CrackerJack (Dec 16, 2010)

randomflip said:


> Just got a BOE epic drop! I sold it for 15k and bought the Master Riding, It really does make a difference especially with our guild perk which brings it to about 320%. It is great for gathering and questing though yeah it is recommended to have two Crafting professions instead of 1x crafting 1x gathering for raiding so I probably won't be doing much of that anyways .



yea i kinda reget getting it on a few toons, pretty much just wanted it for ach. so reset of mine toons... i'll get it threw Glory of the Hero...

edit: I meant' What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been


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## Delta6326 (Dec 16, 2010)

One word: KEK


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## ShiBDiB (Dec 16, 2010)

k im doing it.. if i can find a guild to play with. Anyone with a nice active guild, by active i mean both ingame and a forum, that is willing to take a retail newbie please pm me the server and who i should /w


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## BondExtreme (Dec 17, 2010)

DannibusX said:


> Good thing this thread exists.
> 
> Just reminded me to pay my power bill.



Your welcome xD 

So I am getting better slowly at keeping mana. Decided to keep inner will on a lot. Keeps my mana up. Still don't have the iLevel for heroics though. :/


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## Zubasa (Dec 17, 2010)

ShogoXT said:


> Im sorry, but I have already seen this talked about by a Blizzard rep. They use the 280% and 310% as addition for speed increases, so it would be 290% and 320%. It is not multiplicative.


Actually we are both wrong.
The base flight speed is indeed 310%, but flight speed is indeed multiplied by 110%.
Blizzard reps don't always know what they are talking about.



BondExtreme said:


> huh? I already had 310 flying and when I got this guild perk, my speed went up to about 350 speed flying. I know because carbonite tells you exactly how fast you are flying.


This is correct.


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## BondExtreme (Dec 20, 2010)

Hmm. Any of you guys playing A LOT less now since launch? I've noticed that I can't get myself to play hours a day now. It's more like an hour a day now. I know this is random but was wondering if any of you guys aren't crazy for the game too much anymore. xD


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## entropy13 (Dec 20, 2010)

What are your gearscores guys? XD


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## NinkobEi (Dec 20, 2010)

79 gearscore. read it and weap! thats on my l 65 priest. (shadow priests mana consumation in relation to mana regen is just pitiful. OOM all the time)


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## animal007uk (Dec 20, 2010)

my gear score is -333, shitest addon ever made.


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## johnnyfiive (Dec 21, 2010)

This guild name had me laughing..







And here is a picture of my ui, using LUI. 






WoW certainly has changed since I last played in 2005. So much more fun imo.


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## Frizz (Dec 21, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> Hmm. Any of you guys playing A LOT less now since launch? I've noticed that I can't get myself to play hours a day now. It's more like an hour a day now. I know this is random but was wondering if any of you guys aren't crazy for the game too much anymore. xD



I reached 85 and noticed I had to do heroics to gear up, I just cbf anymore. It takes too much of my time which is the biggest problem so I'm sticking with casual content and casual games.


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## BondExtreme (Dec 22, 2010)

randomflip said:


> I reached 85 and noticed I had to do heroics to gear up, I just cbf anymore. It takes too much of my time which is the biggest problem so I'm sticking with casual content and casual games.



*Looks at sig*
True but BFBC2 isn't necessarily a casual game.


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## ShiBDiB (Dec 22, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> *Looks at sig*
> True but BFBC2 isn't necessarily a casual game.



hell of alot more casual then wow... id even go as far to say id play bc2 infront of a girl and not be ashamed


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## DannibusX (Dec 22, 2010)

BondExtreme said:


> Hmm. Any of you guys playing A LOT less now since launch? I've noticed that I can't get myself to play hours a day now. It's more like an hour a day now. I know this is random but was wondering if any of you guys aren't crazy for the game too much anymore. xD



It's the opposite for me, I've been playing a lot more as of late.  Of course, I do have a new character that I am rolling so that can be a big part of it.


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## Frizz (Dec 25, 2010)

Been running through a few heroics, it's definitely gotten much harder, the need to CC is essential which is awesome because it actually emphasizes on character roles which makes each player in the group much much more visible if somebody ain't doing their job you'll know who it is straight away. Heals/DPS/Tanks have a much bigger role to fill than before, its pretty awesome but at the same time can make PUGs VERY VERY frustrating to play with.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Dec 25, 2010)

I'm enjoying this expansion, first expansion I can really say that about. I'm glad cc is actually back, sad that warriors dont have it. But I can basically lock down a mob for it's whole hp bar, at least a caster mob, so it's just as useful, and I hit like a truck. Just hit 340 item level, getting annoyed though. Done 15 or so heroics now and havent even seen 1 single dps plate piece drop. Yet I have 3 ilvl 346 trinks, 2ilvl 346 rings, a ilvl346 ranged weapon.


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## entropy13 (Dec 25, 2010)

Do you have plate dps heirlooms? It would come in handy, considering it levels along with the wearer.


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## CrackerJack (Dec 25, 2010)

entropy13 said:


> Do you have plate dps heirlooms? It would come in handy, considering it levels along with the wearer.



? heirlooms at 85 would be pointless. and it only it only goes to 80. and i'm assuming he was 85.. doing herioc


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## entropy13 (Dec 25, 2010)

CrackerJack said:


> ? heirlooms at 85 would be pointless. and it only it only goes to 80. and i'm assuming he was 85.. doing herioc



Yeah, just read right now that the CURRENT heirlooms will be capped at 80 i.e. there would be "new" heirlooms (or at the least, leveling items) in the upcoming patches.


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## CrackerJack (Dec 25, 2010)

entropy13 said:


> Yeah, just read right now that the CURRENT heirlooms will be capped at 80 i.e. there would be "new" heirlooms (or at the least, leveling items) in the upcoming patches.



there already new heirlooms out, it's threw guild advancement... back/head pieces


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## entropy13 (Dec 25, 2010)

CrackerJack said:


> there already new heirlooms out, it's threw guild advancement... back/head pieces



My point was that the old ones would be essentially replaced.


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## ShiBDiB (Dec 25, 2010)

ShiBDiB said:


> k im doing it.. if i can find a guild to play with. Anyone with a nice active guild, by active i mean both ingame and a forum, that is willing to take a retail newbie please pm me the server and who i should /w



No takers?


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## Frizz (Dec 25, 2010)

entropy13 said:


> My point was that the old ones would be essentially replaced.



Same here I hoped for that, but unfortunately it will be a while til we can see any guilds at level 15-20 and running around with extreme heirlooms. For now though we do have the guild perks to help level a bit by 10%-15%


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## v12dock (Dec 26, 2010)

Uhh is anyone else having trouble getting tank gear?


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## Frizz (Dec 27, 2010)

v12dock said:


> Uhh is anyone else having trouble getting tank gear?



Nope, but having trouble getting DPS plate gear for my DK :/ ... My prot warrior is decked up in 346/333 blues.


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## v12dock (Dec 28, 2010)

Woohoo after the servers go offline, I get some bullshit suspension.

Account Name: XXXXXXXXX

Account Action: 3 hour suspension and password reset
Reason for Action:  In-Game Chat Policy Violation - Advertisement and Spamming

This suspension happened because one or more characters on the account were identified exchanging, or contributing to the exchange of, in-game property (items or gold) for ""real-world"" currency. This exchange process negatively impacts the World of Warcraft game environment by detracting from the value of the in-game economy.

To prevent further harm to the game and the account you use, the account has been suspended for 3 hours and the password was reset. You do not need to reply to this email, as the account will automatically become available again once the 3-hour suspension period has ended. It may take up to one hour for our system to generate and send the new password. If you have not received a password within one hour of this message's delivery, please check your Spam, Junk, or Suspect Mail folders. If you are still unable to locate the email containing your new password, please contact us using this form: http://us.blizzard.com/support/webform-us.xml or use the password recovery function on https://us.battle.net/account/support/login-support.xml.

Account compromises are usually the result of the registered player of the account sharing his or her login information or playing on a computer that has a virus.

Please remember that it is your responsibility to keep your login information confidential. Any account that is registered to your name may not be shared with anyone except for one minor, of whom you are acting as a parent or guardian. You are also responsible for every use of your login information, whether authorized or not.

For additional security tips and information, please visit the following sites:

- Account Security: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/21131
- Unauthorized Account Access Policy: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/20460
- World of Warcraft Account Security: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/20572

 If you are looking for an added layer of security, we currently offer the Blizzard Authenticator, an optional device that can help prevent unauthorized account access. For more information about how the Authenticator

works or how to add one to a World of Warcraft account, please visit the Blizzard Authenticator FAQ at http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/24660.

Please be aware that if unauthorized access to this account continues after the recovery process is complete, it may lead to further action against the account. For more information, please review the World of Warcraft Terms of Use (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html).

Regards,

Customer Services
Blizzard Entertainment
www.worldofwarcraft.com

The reasons given are completely inconstant with each other

"Reason for Action:  In-Game Chat Policy Violation - Advertisement and Spamming"

"This suspension happened because one or more characters on the account were identified exchanging, or contributing to the exchange of, in-game property (items or gold) for ""real-world"" currency. This exchange process negatively impacts the World of Warcraft game environment by detracting from the value of the in-game economy."

Both with never took place and I have been on my account for the past few days for a large portion of the day and I was not randomly disconnected.


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## v12dock (Jan 22, 2011)

Though I would post my fishing progress...


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