How is the Storm Peaks coming along? Seems like it has a lot of history and culture behind it.
This zone has been closed off more than it's been open. There are a few hefty bugs that they're trying to iron out that forces them to seal it off now and then, since the bugs bring the entire world server down. That and there was an XP exploit that the beta testers found and needed to be dealt with mighty quickly, so it was sealed off for that as well.
As far as the history and culture, I loved what I saw. A lot of Titan lore, a lot of Dwarven history. The introduction to the zone is pretty awful, though. Your first quest hub in the culture-rich zone is a Goblin town (K3) full of whimsy that has little to do with the zone's overall story. I guess you need to keep the mood light sometimes, though. Still, despite the silly Goblins, it was one of my favorite zones while I could get in there. Blizzard has thrown around the term "epic scale" quite a bit, and I think Storm Peaks really displays that. The place is absolutely massive, in the good way. Watch the video above if you want an example of the quests you'll be seeing. Be warned, it's kind of a spoiler in that doing this quest for the first time really leaves you in awe. Watching it beforehand might take that away a little. dotorion asked...
Does Northrend have a 'level requirement' like Outlands?
Groups of Words' anonyomous blogger bought up a rather interesting theory regarding World of Warcraft expansions: They're actually more like sequels, in that they change a lot of the basic groundwork of the game and the classes to such a point that it feels like a completely different game.
As evidence of this, he puts forth a large list things that have changed between original WoW and Burning Crusade. Being a semi-old-timer to WoW, I certainly recognized pretty much all of the changes, and thinking back, a lot of them have been doozies.
Every week, Daniel Whitcomb brings you analysis, opinions, and advice on the world of the Death Knight in Lichborne.
The Death Knight, as is expected, is still very much a class in flux. This sometimes makes it difficult to pontificate too much about certain aspects of the Death Knight class, because they may be completely different in the next Beta build.
That said, a lot of aspects of the Death Knight class are solidifying nicely at this point. Itemization, or at least the way Death Knights use stats, is pretty solid, and worth discussing so that you have an idea of what gear upgrades to look for you as you exit the Ebon Hold and head out into the wider world.
I'm noticing a disturbing trend in perusing the Wrath blue posts. Well, disturbing for me, and possibly for any other warriors out there. All that awesome we seemed to be getting? It doesn't seem that the warriors are finding it quite so awesome. A case in point is Titan's Grip. The Wrath forums seem to indicate that's it's not all wine and roses. There is a lot of math going back and forth in that thread, so I'll simplify it (probably too much, but that's what comments are for): At present, the white damage of Titan's Grip does not exceed that of dual wielding one hand or off hand weapons. This means that the damage increase of the talent must come from specials such as Bloodsurge hasted Slams, Whirlwinds and Bloodthirsts. However, since Titan's Grip slows the weapons down considerably (fully talented, Titan's Grip means you swing 20% slower, so a 3.5 speed weapon can be over four seconds between swings) any miss streak can be crippling for rage generation. No rage generation means no rage to use those specials, so that you're dependent on white damage that's actually inferior to what it would be without the talent. It seems a little counter-intuitive that so evocative and exciting (on paper, anyway) a talent would actually lead to a DPS decrease.
I find myself wondering if the issue is not with the talent itself, however, but with the itemization of all 2h weapons in the 60 - 70 game.
Okay, there's so much happening with Shamans that I don't think we can wait for the next Totem Talk to discuss it all. Between itemization changes, patch notes and new talents, there's a lot to discuss. First off, the new itemization.
In part, the real power of the shift towards granting AP from agility isn't even that it will make agility more attractive on our gear, although it will. The real power is in this move's synergy with the incoming enhancement talent Mental Dexterity. A great deal of the mail currently sneered at as 'hunter mail' has both agility and intellect on it. One example is the Mantle of the Tireless Tracker, an SSC drop. Under current itemization these shoulders grant 64 AP. With the new way items work with shamans, they will grant 86 AP, or 109 AP if you have full Mental Dexterity.
Tipster Korgak sent in a piece of news from the Wrath Shaman forums: shamans now get AP from agility. To quote Blue poster Koraa:
Sorry about that, it should of been in the patch notes. The idea is for DPS mail (with AGI and AP) to be viable for both Hunters and Shaman. Strength is mostly now only a stat for Death Knights, Warriors and Ret Paladins.
While this won't immediately take shamans out of wearing leather for their enhancement DPS needs, it does make the leather that feral druids wear less attractive. Rogue leather, which tends to have agi, attack power and crit will still be fairly attractive, but now all that mail that has stats for hunters will look a lot more appealing to our melee branch of the best class in the game. One depressing note seems to be that our agility to crit formulas seem to have changed negatively as well, most likely because we're expected to push agility more than currently.
Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.
Brace yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. Today's Hybrid Theory is purely guesswork and speculation. In no way will I pretend that these are facts, and you should not take them as such. It's a topic that grabbed my interest, and it's something I really enjoy trying to figure out despite the missing pieces of information we don't have yet. I welcome all of you to add your thoughts on it in the comments section below. Perhaps we can get a decent idea of what's to come.
Let's get started, shall we? In the previous weeks of Hybrid Theory, we've discussed all we knew about some of our favoriteclasses. During this discussion, matters of itemization often came up. Most notably, the new Spellpower mechanic. This would allow healers and DPS classes to use the same gear, but Healing spells would get twice the benefit.
First thought is that DPS and healers will share gear. Right? Well... maybe. Possibly. There are a lot of factors we don't really know yet. While it isn't always the case, for some classes there is a pretty large divide between gear that is good for a caster and gear that is good for a healer, and the deciding factor isn't how much damage or healing is on that item. In some cases you'll be able to switch seamlessly from DPS spec to Healing spec and not need to change your equipment, but trying to optimize your gear in both cases is not going to be so easy.
Obstruce brings up a topic that seems obvious to some people but can drive others crazy: healers wearing less sturdy gear than they can just for the stats. I won't lie -- I've got a few pieces of leather on my restoration Shaman for the stats, but in general, I don't think it's a bad thing that healers and casters sometimes wear cloth for the stats, given of course 1) that they're not taking it from someone else who needs it, and 2) that there's not a better piece of normal gear for them to be wearing (it's an upgrade).
Obstruce's aunt disagrees, especially with Shamans and Druids -- if for some reason they pull aggro, wearing leather or cloth will only make things harder on the group. Which is true -- if I'm wearing leather (or even cloth) on my Shaman, I'm not going to have near as much armor as I would wearing the mail I'm supposed to wear. But in a group where all members are doing what they should be, I should never get hit anyway. If a healer's getting hit, it's a good 80% of the time not their fault -- it's the tank's or DPS' fault for not keeping aggro where it belongs.
So no, I don't see any problem with a Druid or Shammy (or even a Paladin, though there's a lot of nice healing plate out there anyway) wearing less than they're meant to. Warriors are definitely not in the same situation -- while yes, some of that Hunter mail may have lots of Agility on it, and that will help out your crit percentage, you get so much more bonus from Strength and Armor that it's just not worth it. Casters can steal Mage and Priest gear (as long as they're not actually stealing it from actual Mages and Priests) if it's an upgrade, but Warriors almost never have a reason to slum it up in mail.
My original intent for this week's Hybrid Theory was to take a close look at the Badge Gear for Hybrids in patch 2.4, but that turned into a monstrous project that left my head spinning. I remained vigilant, until I saw the specific class columns were working on this themselves, starting with Shifting Perspectives. Upon hearing that, I jumped for joy and it was as if the Heavens opened up and thousands of beautiful angels embraced me against their supple forms.
So instead of filling your browser with loot links and badge prices, I'm going to talk about the future of itemization, from patch 2.4 and onward.
"We do plan to have more specs share some loot. I know it's great when the Retribution-Paladin piece drops, but that's a piece that isn't good for 26 other classes/specs, so hopefully we can make it so the item will apply to more classes/specs so even the randomness of loot won't be so much of a big deal."
The Fear Ward change, like I mentioned in my last post, is primarily a convenience change for PvE. Reupping Fear Ward every 3 minutes when you need to keep putting Shadowform back on afterwards is annoying, and a large mana drain over long encounters. However, it wasn't crippling, so not a very big deal. What this will help the most is PvP, especially arenas. Having an arena match last longer than three minutes isn't unlikely, so you will probably want to put Fear Ward back up at some point throughout the match. Being required to drop Shadowform to do it is sort of a pain, considering both the loss of damage and the mitigation Shadowform supplies you with, arguably one of the Shadow Priest's strongest defenses.
The Spell Haste change is what has me a little excited. I'll admit right away, I haven't crunched any numbers. I'm notoriously bad at breaking down raw stats, I usually just eyeball my gear and take a guess. I'm right or pretty close more often than not but don't hate me too much if my guesses here are completely wrong. If you want to see some raw numbers, you can probably check them out over at the ShadowPriest.com forum.
A lot of the changes to gear in 2.3 are welcome upgrades, especially in the lower level instances like Shadowfang Keep or Razorfen Kraul. But why, when changing loot in Blackrock Spire, did they change the Warmaster Leggings from tank to DPS pants? Whyarethree of the better paladin drops in Blackrock Depths being changed to generic DPS plate? It could be a sign of future thinking on the way Retribution Paladins are itemized, it could be intended towards leveling Death Knights (as is suggested in the comments), or there could be some other reason I'm not even remotely close to guessing. (Smarter folks than I suggest that this is just a case of gear that wasn't really good for paladins or warriors at that level getting brought more into line with other item budgets.)
Some changes have clear goals - the Bloodmoon Cloak is clearly now aimed at casters. I've had two warriors that wore it for the stam it used to have, but that's clearly no longer going to be the case. Similarly, a great many items like the Embrace of the Wind Serpent from the Temple of Atal'Hakkar, severalitems from Maraudon and even more items from BRD are having their stats adjusted by removing their various resistances and adding direct stat boosts like agility and crit. These are changes that make sense to me, but why change the Warmaster's or remove plate geared for paladins?
Have any of the other gear changes made you scratch your head? Do you think this is just a case of items getting improved item budgeting or are changes ahead for how certain classes/specs use certain items?
I found out about this when I spotted a player trying to sell the Ring of Bitter Shadows in chat. I asked them where they got it, since I remembered that it was jewelcrafted, and they sent me to a vendor named Jase Farlan up at Light's Hope Chapel, who sells it for a pretty decent price, in my opinion. It looks like a few other jewelcrafting items are currently available from vendors. This includes some of the figurines -- at least Figurine - Black Pearl Panther and Figurine - Truesilver Crab.
The question in my mind is whether these items will remain available post-expansion. My bet would be that they'll vanish, and this will just have been a fun little jewelcrafting preview. As far as I know, no significant crafted items are currently available from vendors, but maybe that's set to change.
Additionally, new and more powerful water, food, arrows, and bullets can be bought from an orc vendor named Galgrom deep in the Caverns of Time in Tanaris. The arrows and bullets are also available from general goods vendors throughout Azeroth, and seem to be a much better deal than the water, which as far as I can tell is exclusive to Galgrom. At over 10s for one drink, I probably won't be buying the water for general use, at least not until after I get my epic mount; the ammo costs 10s for a whole stack.
Have you all spotted any other BC items that have snuck in with the patch? And those of you who have tried the Filtered Draenic Water, how would you rate it? Does it make financial sense for someone with a mana pool around 6k?
I've talked before about how important nature resist is in parts of
Ahn'Qiraj and how difficult it is to find in Azeroth. Well, today the Cenarion Circle reputation page was updated
with a selection of craftable cloth and plate nature resist gear. CM Eyonix has informed us that these
will go live in patch 1.11, along with leather patterns (I can only presume no reputation is required, since they
are not on the Cenarion Circle page) for sale in Southwind Village. Having options for nature resist that don't
require me to farm Maraudon is big plus.
Obstruce 
I found out about this when I spotted a player trying to sell the 
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