A humorous little bug on the PTR has hunter and warlocks spinning. It seems that while implementing the new feature where pets will despawn when on a flying mount and respawn on landing, the pets have somehow gotten horribly confused and have ended up with the wrong person. Not too bad when it's two people of the same class, but hunters have been coming up with warlock pets and warlocks have suddenly discovered they have a frostsaber.
Even more awesome, the pets are apparently usable. A mage reported being killed by a felguard with Bestial Wrath. Warlocks are able to keep cats on their victims while dotting them up. This is madness!
I presume this bug will be fixed by the time the patch comes out, though I'm kind of hoping it isn't. The confusion it would cause would almost be worth the forum complaining ...
The lucky ducks of the guild Impervious on Stormreaver had a fun night on the public test realm Tuesday. With the help of a GM, they faced the first four bosses of Mount Hyjal. The GM deathtouched two of the bosses at a certain percent so that Impervious could test the next fight.
The first boss, Rage Winterchill, is a lich with a Death & Decay spell. Impervious got him to 30 percent before the GM deathtouched him. He dropped some resto shaman bracers and rogue boots. Anetheron is a dreadlord whose abilities include Carrion Swarm, which hits for 6k and reduces healing done by 75 percent for 15 seconds; Vampiric Aura, which causes him and his adds to get 300 percent healing from melee damage done; and Inferno, which summons infernals pretty much constantly throughout the fight. Impervious got him to 50 percent before the GM asked them to move on (sorry, no deathtouch and therefore no loots.)
Next up was Kaz'Rogal, a nasty-looking Kazzak thing with an interesting ability: he mana drains you for 600 periodically, and if you don't have enough mana, you take 10k damage. This ability gets sped up as the fight goes on, so it looks like you have to burn him down fast. According to Impervious, they actually did kill this boss on their own on the second attempt, receiving a nice healing mace and a tanking shield. However, they did get a bit of help from the lovely giant Tauren Flaskataur, who sold them a ton of consumables including the Flask of Flaskocity (I am not making this up.)
The final boss Impervious faced was the pit lord Azgalor. Azgalor was sort of a hyped-up warlock -- he had a Rain of Fire, a Howl of Terror, and some sort of Curse of Doom-like thing that spawns a Doomguard upon your death. His aggro was highly tetchy, so Impervious called it a night and went to bed.
Sorry, clothie tailors -- today's not your lucky day. As Mike noted early, word from the PTR is that two of the BOP tailoring sets -- Frozen Shadoweave and Spellfire -- have been significantly nerfed, at least according to their users. As a set, Spellfire gains 29 int but loses 34 damage and 5 spell crit rating, while Frozen Shadoweave loses 34 damage and gets 24 int. The stats on the Primal Mooncloth set seem to be unchanged.
As expected, tailors are not happy about this. While it was widely acknowledged that some of the crafted sets were superior to Tiers 4 and 5, and were a big reason why mages, warlocks and shadow priests were out-DPSing melee, many tailors thought buffing the raid sets instead was the solution. Selected comments from the threads include "gg blizzard i hate you all", "this is a pathetic attempt by blizz to fix their raid game", and "This patch makes me want to kill a cat. Lots of cats. Kittens, even." However, a few casters are okay with the changes, mostly because they calculate it as a minor loss of DPS in exchange for int.
I'm not a clothie or a tailor, so I really don't have an informed reaction to this. What do you think? Is this a needed change, or is it a bait and switch for tailors who put a lot of money into their profession?
Over at Blessing of Kings, Coriel has a great explanation of how the paladin's to-be-changed Illumination talent -- which has been happily residing in the holy tree since the game's release -- became such a thorny problem.
The talent (as it exists now) returns the base mana cost of a healing spell to the paladin when the healing spell crits. (It costs 5 talent points to bring it to this level of effectiveness and requires 15 points in the talent tree. So a fully maxxed illumination will cost you 20 talent points in the holy tree.) The end result is that, overall, the paladin receives a mana discount on their healing spells equal to their spell crit rate. Prior to patch 1.9, a paladin could boost his or her holy spell crit rate by 5% through talents (priests have a similar talent that boosts holy spell crit), but it was difficult for paladins to get any other spell crit gear. The plate itemization simply didn't exist and there was heavy competition for generic items that a paladin could use like the Azuresong Mageblade.
It looks like the Battle of Mount Hyjal has been opened for testing on the PTR to everyone with Honored reputation or greater with the Violet Eye. Boubouille of MMO Champion, Bistustal at World of Raids, and the stalwart testers of the Elitist Jerks forums have gone and taken some lovely screenshots for those of us not on the PTR.
You start out at an Alliance base commanded by Lady Jaina Proudmoore, who is apparently both 20 feet tall and totally okay with the non-scourge undead. The Scourge come over the hill in Black Morass-like waves. Without the help of your team, the Alliance and Jaina get owned, and everything despawns.
According to the lore, after the waves at the Alliance base, you should go to the Horde base (commanded by Thrall) and the final Night Elf base (commanded by Tyrande.) You'll fight your way up the mountain until the final battle against Archimonde the Defiler. Wowwiki also suggests that you fight two other major lore figures from Hyjal -- the dreadlord Anetheron and the pit lord Azgalor.
All in all, Mount Hyjal looks like a fun instance. Too bad I'll probably never see it until level 80. What kind of instances would you like to see in the Caverns of Time? Do you wish you could run Hyjal?
I never really understood the popularity of the twinking phenomenon. A lowbie character, horribly expensive, never growing or changing but only there to own unsuspecting level 22s venturing to WSG for the first time ... meh. But a lot of people seem to like them, and those people might be upset about some of the undocumented changes in 2.1.0.
According to Xarim on Battleground Forums, several items have been changed to make very low-level twinking more difficult. The Lucky Fishing Hat was a cheap way for level 19 twinks to get 15 stamina, but it now requires level 30 to equip. The herbalism-gathered Nightmare Seeds, which give you a temporary boost of 2000 health, have been changed to be 60+ only. The biggest change for twinks, though, is the fact that the blue leg armor and spellthread leg enhancements can only be placed on items of level 35 or greater, as can shoulder and helm enchants. For some reason, the epic spellthread and leg armor can still be placed on anything. Go figure.
Do you have a 19 or 29 twink? How will these changes affect you? (Thanks to firefly for the tip!)
As you may have heard by now, the faction rep grind for the Netherwing epic mount will require players to complete "Daily" quests-- that is, short collecting quests that can be done only once per day. When players first heard about that, a lot of them felt the same way that Oddig of Skullcrusher did-- they saw the time limits on the quests as just another way Blizzard was trying to turn WoW into a timesink, in order to make spend more time playing less game.
Which is not exactly wrong, if you're a hardcore player who usually grinds rep for hours every day. But as Drysc says, the Daily quests are meant for players who don't have a lot of time to invest all at once. They're meant "to provide greater reward for smaller investments of time." Basically, this is their answer to giving the casual players their own content. Just like rested XP (which is a great idea that rewards you for not rushing through content), the rewards at the end of these "Daily" grinds can't be rushed to by hardcore players who play in huge chunks of time.
When you put it that way, I'm all for it. Hardcore players still won't be happy, but it's there's plenty for them to grind away already-- if you guys have already grinded every single reputation in the game so far that these daily quests are the only ones you have to do, then try playing another game for a bit (I've been liking Titan Quest a lot lately). Some players argue that the casual players expected to do these quests probably won't have the 5,000g needed for the epic riding skill to even start them, to which I say-- err, good point.
Of course the other note here is that, as players have noticed on the PTR, the quests seem to reset every time the server restarts. So if you're really hankering to get to that mount quickly, you don't really have to wait for every day-- hotfixes and restarts can give you a few more quests to do every week.
It's always nice when Alliance pay a diplomatic visit to Orgrimmar. The ambassadors -- usually of the night elf variety -- tend to sit on the bank's roof, naked and dancing, until the point when some brave Hordie decides to attack the dancer. Then out come the stealthed rogues.
But Alliance are no longer welcome in the Horde capital. As of the 2.1.0 test realm, there are Troll Roof Stalkers on top of the Orgrimmar bank. These level 70 elites are apparently intended to keep Alliance out of Org. Many people are angry at what they consider a new chapter in Blizzard's war on fun, but it's unlikely that enough Alliance enjoy hanging out in Orgrimmar to mount serious protests. Heck, I'm Horde and I don't even like hanging out in Orgrimmar. It looks like it was designed by the army surplus tent store.
Personally, I don't consider this a game-breaking nerf -- but then again, I'm Hordeside. I do understand why it seems unfair, so I will accede to the placement of Gnome Shin Kickers in the Deeprun Tram if this change goes live. Also, I agree that Troll Roof Stalkers would be a great band name. What do you think about this change?
Wow, I sure am glad I came across this in my internet travels yesterday, since I seem to have missed it in the patch notes. But there it is: when 2.1 goes live, "The Epic bind on equip Blacksmith weapon recipes now require more materials to make." How much more, you ask? The image above (via World of Raids) shows the new recipes. Here's how they compare to the old:
Guess I better get a move on farming the mights for my Hand of Eternity. The price impact of this change will vary depending on the crafters you know, but based on the rates I've seen should be a few hundred gold. Fortunately, it doesn't look like the patch is going up today, so we have at least a week to get our mats together.
Wondering what exactly happens when you get exalted with the Netherwing faction to get that neat flying drake? Joni of Malygos has done the grind on the test realm and has some information for all would-be dragonriders.
After pretending to work for (and sabotaging) the Fel Orcs, she had to race six netherdrakes at honored reputation. On the way to exalted, she could complete 9 daily quests for reputation with the Netherwing. Finally, she hit exalted and got her "reward" from the Fel Orcs ... a personal audience with Illidan. Oops. Looks like those magical eyes can see through your disguise, and you'd be pretty much boned if the Netherwings didn't come down and save you.
Joni ended up being flown to Shattrath and getting to pick a free netherdrake from a number of available colors. The questline also gave her a nice trinket that summons a netherwhelp as a combat pet! She says the grind will take a non-human about two weeks if you do all the daily quests each day, and she plans on writing up a Netherwing guide to help those of us who are a little less motivated to do the whole thing on the PTR. Congratulations, Joni, and may you fly your dragon proudly through the skies of the test realm.
By now, you've probably at least heard (perhaps in haiku form) that shamans are facing a serious nerf in the upcoming patch. As a Resto/Elemental shaman, I figured I'd take a few minutes to lay out for you just what we, your trusty totem-dropping buddies, will be facing.
Y'see, there's this ability called Clearcasting. Mages, priests, shaman, and druids can all get it under certain specs-- it basically gives you a mana-free spell every few casts, the percentage of which changes by class. Mages at full spec get a 10% chance, Druids get it as a chance on melee attack, and priests get it as a usable ability (with a 3 minute cooldown).
Now, this talent is especially useful for Shaman, since we are notoriously mana inefficient-- supposedly, that's our tradeoff for being able to melee, heal, and cast damage spells. Way back when, the Clearcasting talent (in the Elemental tree) had a standard rate of 10%, but just recently, in 2.0.10, it was changed to anytime we got a critical spell hit.
That's huge. But it's also what the devs apparently didn't like.
Along with the Skettis Skyguard, there's another new faction to grind for in 2.1: Ogri'la. In my search for the elusive ogres, I was sent down to the Lower City by a quest giver in Shattrath's Terrace of Light; from there, the next step is to zip up to the Ring of Blood in Blade's Edge and talk to an ogre there. (Side note: the journey was hilarious, as epic flying mounts on the PTR are currently bugged to flutter their wings insanely fast when you fly forward.) I didn't follow through after that, because all the "real" quests to gain reputation with the Ogri'la ogres appear to be 5-man, and the thought of pugging with four other random PTRers was a little daunting.
Never fear, though, I did go over to Ogri'la to snap the above shot and check out the rewards, which you can see in the picture after the cut (not composited by me; my pic was much worse). The prices of all the gear are in Apexis Crystals and Apexis Shards, which I assume drop from whatever it is you have to kill to get Ogri'la rep. If it's anything like the Sporeggar, getting the required reputation level is much more difficult than getting the turn-in tokens. Oh, and there's a repair vendor there, which is always pleasant. Ogri'la is located in the west of Blade's Edge, between Forge Camp Terror and Forge Camp Wrath.
G'eras, the Naaru who sells you things for Badges of Justice in Shattrath, now has eight new epic helms with meta slots in addition to his new Primal Nether trade-in. They cost 60 badges each. As you might expect, there are two helms for each type of armor, which makes it pretty easy to figure out which are for which classes. Of course, there being two cloth helms, the DPS clothies have to share one. Spec-wise, the hybrids' helms break down like this, as far as I can tell:
Druid: Feral
Shaman: Elemental
Warrior: Protection
Paladin: Holy
All the helms have from 21 to 37 stamina on them too, which is nice -- I've noticed that the better gear my Priest gets, the less HP she has. All in all it looks like pretty good gear (although they need to work on meta gem itemization, but that's a separate issue). Screenshots of all the items after the cut. What do you think? Will you be shooting for one of these? (Pictured is the Rogue helm.)
In every public test realm, there are those brave souls who go out and try to grind factions, kill bosses, and do long questlines for rewards that will not be transferred to their main characters. Aalhi of Kael'Thas is one of those brave souls. He's decided to head over to Skettis and start doing some of the Sha'Tari Skyguard reputation quests to see what they're like. So far, he's gotten a few quests involving killing mobs for reputation, feeding a nether ray, drinking a potion and killing named mobs, retrieving a prisoner's pack, assembling a book and turning into an arakkoa. Sounds like a pretty neat new place to quest, but the most interesting part of Aalhi's information is the reputation rewards.
At exalted with Sha'Tari Skyguard, you get a nether ray flying mount (and yes, you do need 300 riding skill already. Sorry.) You can also buy two nice cloaks -- one for melee, one for casters -- that have decent stats and a use of reducing your fall speed for 10 seconds. There are some fun buyable foods at friendly reputation: one that restores 2148 health and 4410 mana and one that restores 7500 HP and gives you 30 stamina and 20 spirit for half an hour. The real prizes of Skyguard rep, according to Aalhi, are the two trinkets you can get at exalted:
"Airman's Ribbon of Gallantry: Equip: Improves spell critical rating by 31 Equip: 30% chance to increase your spell damage and healing by 80 when you kill a target that gives experience or honor. This effect cannot occur more than once every 10 seconds.
Skyguard Silver Cross: Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 31 Equip: 30% chance to increase your attack power by 140 when you kill a target that gives experience or honor. This effect cannot occur more than once every 10 seconds."
Niiiice. What do you think? Will you be grinding Skyguard or Netherwing rep in the next patch, or trying to get to the Black Temple?
The announcement of a Netherdrake flying mount in the next patch was a beacon of hope to broke people like myself, who hoped we could quest for the mount while continuing to blow our hard-earned cash on epic gear and new recipes. Unfortunately, our hopes were in vain. The Netherdrake quest line apparently requires 300 riding skill to begin.
Andrevv of World of Raids provides a nice guide plus screenshots of the quest line, which I'll summarize here. First, you have to swear yourself to the Netherdrake faction (which requires doing the Kindness questline for neutrality.) Then you get asked to disguise yourself as a Fel Orc and join the Illidari! Awesome! I always wanted to be Illidari. You then head out to Netherwing Ledge and get a couple of quests as an Orc. You can either gather 40 of some special ore/herb/etc. if you have a gathering profession, or pick up 40 crystals if you're not. Then you can head over to a goblin mercenary, who will give you some quests to help the Netherwing faction by sabotaging the Orcs. You can gather fel glands to poison orc peons or collect Netherwing relics from a skyway.
There's no information on where the questline goes after that, but the ore/crystal/poison questlines are marked as "Daily," and Andrevv got 250 Netherwing reputation for turning in his first 40 ore. The Daily quests seem to be meant to limit the amount of grinding you can do in one day -- but since there are screenshots of PTR characters with drakes already, this may not be working as intended.
A humorous little bug on the PTR has hunter and warlocks spinning. It seems that while implementing the new feature where pets will despawn when on a flying mount and respawn on landing, the pets have somehow gotten horribly confused and have ended up with the wrong person. Not too bad when it's two people of the same class, but hunters have been coming up with warlock pets and warlocks have suddenly discovered they have a frostsaber. 
Sorry, clothie tailors -- today's not your lucky day. As Mike noted early, word from the PTR is that two of the BOP tailoring sets -- 
I never really understood the popularity of the twinking phenomenon. A lowbie character, horribly expensive, never growing or changing but only there to own unsuspecting level 22s venturing to WSG for the first time ... meh. But a lot of people seem to like them, and those people might be upset about some of the undocumented changes in 2.1.0.
As you may have heard by now, the faction rep grind for 
It's always nice when Alliance pay a diplomatic visit to Orgrimmar. The ambassadors -- usually of the night elf variety -- tend to sit on the bank's roof, naked and dancing, until the point when some brave Hordie decides to attack the dancer. Then out come the stealthed rogues.
G'eras, the Naaru who sells you things for Badges of Justice in Shattrath, now has eight new epic helms with meta slots in addition to his new Primal Nether trade-in. They cost 60 badges each. As you might expect, there are two helms for each type of armor, which makes it pretty easy to figure out which are for which classes. Of course, there being two cloth helms, the DPS clothies have to share one. Spec-wise, the hybrids' helms break down like this, as far as I can tell:
In every public test realm, there are those brave souls who go out and try to grind factions, kill bosses, and do long questlines for rewards that will not be transferred to their main characters. Aalhi of Kael'Thas is one of those brave souls. He's decided to 
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