We've had a lot of class-specific questions lately (especially Hunters) here on Ask a Beta Tester, but since I don't play every class, I can't answer all of those. However, I've forwarded some of them on to our motley crew of bloggers, so we'll hopefully be able to answer you soon. Until then, let's get started on some other things, shall we?
Robert M asked a pair of questions... Is there going to a difference in the number of badges the same boss drops in the 10 man and the 25 man?
There isn't a difference in the number, no. However, there is a difference in the type of badge. The 10 and 25 man loot is tiered, and the 10 and 25 man badge loot is tiered in a similar way. The badge loot you can get from grinding 10-mans is not the same as grinding 25-mans. Will you be saved to a raid in the 10 man and not be able to do the 25 man that week? it seems like a 25 man geared toon could help the guild in the 10 if its a slow week or some of the raid members have a RL issue.
The 10 and 25 man raids have separate raid IDs, so doing them both in one week won't be an issue.
Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester, wherein WoW Insider's stable of beta testers answer as many of your Wrath Beta questions as possible! Today we'll start off with burton888's question...
Is there a "magic number" for Enchanting, in that you can disenchant everythng in the game (currently 275 for pre-WotLK content)?
My 375 Enchanter was able to start disenchanting blues as soon as I hit Northrend shores, so I can't say for sure what the minimum level is. However, we can take some guesses based on what we saw in The Burning Crusade. As a few readers said, to disenchant epics it actually requires 300 Enchanting. 300 was the profession cap in WoW Classic. Assuming that trend continues, you will need 375 Enchanting to disenchant everything in Wrath. In the expansion after Wrath, it will probably take 450. Getting to 375 is a pretty safe bet.
Red asked...
How is spell damage affecting a Paladin's Ret Aura? Is it reduced like a standard DoT tick or even further? What are the numbers looking like with tested spell damage?
A lot of people who read Ask a Beta Tester regularly have been asking about how easy Burning Crusade heroics will be at level 80. Can they be 3 manned? Can they be duo'd? This one's for you, guys. I decided it's worth a mention all on its own.
Three players, two Death Knights and a Priest, have recently trio'd almost the entirety of Karazhan, minus only Nightbane due to not having completed the quest needed to summon him. Admittedly both Death Knights were using a deep Unholy build which is tuned a little high now, but they're not wearing any high end gear, either. The spec that the tank used is a bit unusual for an Unholy Tanking build. They didn't take Bone Shield, and I suspect Magic Suppression being bugged had something to do with its exclusion, though that may have been fixed and I missed it. A fun little detail they discovered is that Gift of Arthas, which procs a disease, is counted as one of your diseases as a Death Knight and augments abilities that scale depending on how many diseases you have active such as Death Strike.
So there's your answer, ladies and gentlemen. Karazhan can be 3-manned before any raid gear is available, so Burning Crusade heroics will surely be able to be duo'd if you're still hoping and praying for Anzu come level 80.
Let's take a short breather from this whole flood of Wrath of the Lich KingBeta news for a bit. I know everyone's excited to find out more about what's waiting for us in Northrend, but some of us would actually like to play the game right now, instead of waiting for *cough* a few months. As exciting as the new Paladin changes seem to be, players with fresh Level 70 characters would do well to focus on gearing up for now. After all, it'll make it so much easier to fight the numerous baddies in Northrend.
Previously, we discussed the weapons for a Retribution Paladin only starting to gear up for the ever-popular Karazhan. More than anything -- more than any piece of armor -- a Retadin must find the biggest, baddest 2-handed weapon she can find to strike righteous fear into the hearts of her enemies. Once she has that, everything follows. In this installment of The Light and How to Swing It, let's take a look at the armor pieces that every Karazhan-bound Retadin should be wearing.
Branch raised an observation today -- it can be difficult getting groups for instances which aren't the daily Heroic. Of course, in the same post, he claims he gets offers from characters who aren't quite heroic enough for Heroics. The problem seems to really be that he can't get groups that meet his standards for the Heroics he wants to do.
Bornakk first offers that he thinks experience plays a role here. Until you've experienced the content, you're probably going to be intimidated by it. In my opinion, you may have to enjoy some time with PUGs to get that experience.
The thread winds up with what I'd expected in the first place -- the issue is more about which instance offers the most badges for your time. The fate and future of badges has been a hot topic. Bornakk definitely acknowledges that we run Heroics for badges instead of loot. Since Blizzcast indicated changes to badge loot in Wrath of the Lich King, it'll be interesting to see what happens to Heroic badges come expansion time.
This was also a week about preparations. We discussed shaping up smaller guilds for 10-man raiding in Wrath, and we talked about gearing up for PvP from scratch in the face of Season 4's debut. And finally, we had a rather hilarious take on hunter strategy – fuzzy logic, or no?
Be sure to dive into the comments area of each thread (not this one!) and add your own thoughts – unlike your mama, we like us some hot, fresh backtalk.
When we first heard about heroic level instances in the Burning Crusade, many of us were thrilled at the thought of revisiting our favorite low level instances.We would have them boosted to an end-game level and resurrected into regular play.Then we found out that only the dungeons in Outland were geared up for heroic levels.At least one player was pretty disappointed by this news. One of our readers, Sean, asked to open up a dialog about old-world heroics.
Running the old world dungeons as actual five-man instances seems pretty rare these days.Sometimes we skip past them due to decreased leveling requirements, and an ability to gear our alts with gold earns on our mains.Often when we actually venture into these instances at the appropriate level, we are tailing a capable level 70 character.It's kind of a waste of space and programming effort for Blizzard to leave these instances gathering dust.
The long-awaited third episode of Blizzcast, Blizzard's official podcast, has just gone live. Blizzard's US web sites are still down, but you can listen to it and read the transcript on the European site. As usual, since this is a Blizzard podcast and not a WoW-specific one, they spend some time covering the Starcraft universe as well, including an interview with Dustin Browder, SC2 lead designer, which I won't cover (good material on Zergs though). But later they brought in Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan, WoW lead designer for dungeons and raids, and here's what I found interesting in his segment:
The original WoW raids were too hardcore early on; in BC they eased up on that and they hope to continue this in Wrath.
Lessons learned in BC:
Heroic loot needs to be definitely better than normal-mode loot
Introductory raids need to be more friendly – he says "I don't want to say to casual players, but a little bit more accessible to people in general." Cites Maulgar and Mags as examples of less-than-friendly intro raids.
It's that time again. Those of you who were around right beforethe Burning Crusade release might remember this time -- there are no new content patches before the next expansion, and we've got pretty much nothing to look forward to and nowhere to go before Wrath shows up and changes the world for good. Yes, there is a little more yet to discover at the Sunwell, but once we've seen that instance cleared out (Blizzard originally predicted about a month, and it seems like some players might be moving even faster than that), there'll be nothing left but the waiting.
Things went pretty badly last time around -- guilds stopped raiding (what was the point, when the next expansion would replace all of our gear with greens?), players abandoned the game for a while, and there was a general depression in Azeroth. While people were excited for the expansion, the live realms seemed like yesterday's news.
Hopefully things will be better this time around -- back then, we didn't have dailies to do, there weren't any arena matches or tournaments, and the 40 man high-end raid instances were pretty much the only game in town (nowadays we have 10mans, 25mans, or Heroics, and lots of rewards from each). And depending on when Blizzard gets the expansion out, the wait might not be as bad (although if they wait until January again, the time frame should be about the same as last time). But get ready -- the calm before the storm is coming, and we won't see a new game again until we step foot on the icy shores of Northrend.
A minor(but interesting) change was included in the last PTR push: The Shifting Tanzanite has had its stats changed up a bit. Previously a Strength/Agility gem, it is now Agility/Stamina, as you can see above.
Previously, this was arguably the best blue gem in the game for melee DPS classes. With the introduction of the Heroic gems no longer being Unique in patch 2.4, it was a little exciting to be able to slot more than one of these at a time, even if blues aren't the most desirable color for physical damage dealers. Now, the Shifting Tanzanite is still desired, but not necessarily to fill that same role or by the same people. One of the few highly sought after Heroic gems has been gutted.
Why? Nobody knows but Blizzard. One of my theories is these Heroic gems are not meant to be a "best in slot" but an alternative option, even now that you can socket multiples in your armor. It probably won't bother too many melee DPS because as good as that gem was, it was only the best blue for melee. Most melee do not stack blues at all. Tanks do stack blues, however. While this gem has become a little better for the tanks, it most likely does not outweigh Solid Stars of Elune and most certainly is not better than Solid Empyrean Sapphires for the raiders among us.
Attunement is one of those subjects that divides WoW players. You either think people should have to work to get into high-end dungeons, or you think they should be open to anyone with the guts to try. Of course, you're more likely to fall into the first camp if you yourself had to do that work, hence the recent controversy over the attunements for the Black Temple and Mount Hyjal being removed.
Well, it turns out that if WoW lead developer Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan had his way, attunement would be much less of a pain. He dropped the following information in a thread on "Attunement and Alts" in the general forums today:
They would like to make it so getting a Karazhan key or a heroic key gave all your other max-level alts access as well.
They're looking into guild and raid attunements, but "no promises."
They're interested in doing server events to open up content, like the AQ war but, Tigole says, with more fun dailies and fewer boring collection grinds.
Overall, he says the topic of attunement comes up often at Blizz HQ, and they want to do better moving forward and going into Wrath.
Meanwhile, Drysc returns again with news that the looting UI system is undergoing some changes, especially involving BoP items. If only you can loot it, you won't be asked if you want to anymore, and you'll see the name of the item in the confirmation window from now on.
In addition to news about enchanting, PvP honor and spell haste dropping today, it looks very likely that patch 2.4 is due sooner rather than later. Of course, it's also possible that they're doing all this to confuse and bewilder us.
Recently a couple of my guild mates ran Heroic Underbog with a few pug members. Life was good, they made it up to the first boss, Hungarfen, and got him. The odd part happens with the loot. A rogue could have used the Boggspine Knuckles that the boss dropped. However a friendly lock decided that this was a badges run, and not a gearing one. He decided that instead of passing on the item, he was going to need all blue items and shard them. Lo and behold, the lock did just that. Anger ensued, and instead of moving on happy, everyone left quite mad.
Now of course, this sounds like just another pug horror story. What makes it different from that is this lock actually went on to defend his actions, and really stood by his convictions. My first reaction is to balk at this, and say this is never acceptable. However thinking a little beyond that, I've got to wondering if this is a practice that perhaps happens elsewhere. Perhaps this guy is from a different server with a different culture, where heroics are just meant for badges and gear gets auto-sent to the DE factory.
So my question to you, WoW Insider readers, does this kind of thing happen legitimately anywhere else, or is this just another case of another bad pug story?
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
It's been nearly two weeks since patch 2.3 went live, so I thought it might be helpful to talk about the impact it has had on my guild and get some feedback from other officers about their experiences. What has been the best thing in 2.3 for you? What's just plain awful? Here's my take on it.
Thumbs Up: Zul'Aman
Zul'Aman has been a blast for my guild. Most of us enjoy the 10-player raids better than any other group size, so we were really looking forward to this one. Even though it's a bit of a Zul'Gurub rehash lorewise, Zul'Aman has a different feel to it than any other raid. The bosses aren't just standing there blithely unaware of your incursion. The dynamic trash and countdown timer make clearing the whole raid interesting instead of mindlessly slogging through static pulls to get to the bosses. The difficulty seems spot-on, if a little on the challenging side for Tier 4 guilds (but that's the intention, right?). Done right it should be a relatively quick run with some nice loot and badges for everyone. This raid will be a pleasure to run week after week. I hope future raids are more like this one!
Having said that, it's been a challenge scheduling all our raids.
In Patch 2.3, the reputation needed to enter heroic dungeons has been lowered to Honored. As a result, players who have up to now been limited in the heroic dungeons they can run (if they can run any of them) will now be likely to be able to go into just about any heroic dungeon. This has its up sides (easier to get a heroic group) and its down sides (players who are not as geared or experienced with the dungeons will now be running them), which leads me to wonder: what dungeon would be the best 'starter' heroic?
I personally like the Coilfang dungeons on heroic. In addition to running Steam Vaults fairly often, I recently had a great deal of fun running heroic Slave Pens, in a two warrior run the other day. I'm not as enamored of heroic Old Hillsbrad, and I've yet to run heroic Shattered Halls which I think would be grueling. I generally like the Auchindoun heroics with the exception of Auchenai Crypts, which I dislike.
What would you tell a player new to heroics? Where should they go first?
It's that time again. Those of you who were around 
A minor(but interesting) change was included in the last PTR push: The 
The European forums see some 2.4 news dropping, as 
Recently a couple of my guild mates ran Heroic Underbog with a few pug members. Life was good, they made it up to the first boss, 
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