Are you going to step right into a Death Knight first to see how the new Hero class works? Which of the classes has got you most interested in trying new things? I'm excited to see all the Shaman changes, and I've got a Shammy waiting at 70, so that's probably what I'll do first. As for the Death Knight, I kind of want to see that stuff on the live realms, though by the time the beta ends, the call of a new class may be too much for me to ignore.
What's up first for you when you log into the beta realms?
In the comments thread on the post yesterday regarding Wowhead's new pet talent calculators, many of you seemed somewhat misinformed and accused the calculator of being buggy. To set the record straight, here are some fun facts about pets and pet talents in the current Wrath beta:
The +damage/+health/+armor modifiers have been removed from pet families. Instead, a pet's modifiers depend on which of the three pet talent trees it has: Ferocity, Cunning, or Tenacity. However, Blizzard will be implementing pet-family-specific abilities.
Hunters get one pet talent point at level 20, and one every four levels thereafter.
The total number of pet talent points available at level 80 is 16, unless you are a Beast Mastery Hunter with the 51-point talent Beast Mastery, in which case you get an additional five points, for 21 total.
Each successive tier requires three points per previous tier to unlock (compare to five points for player talents). The exception is single-point talents such as Charge or any of the tier 5 talents, which require five points per previous tier, according to their tooltips; the exception to this exception is Boar's Speed.
This means that the tier 5 talents are only available to BM hunters, since they require 20 points to unlock (again according to their tooltips), and any given pet can have at most one of them at a time.
The last two points are based on how the tooltips read. However, this is not how they're currently implemented in-game; in the beta right now, all talents require three points per previous tier to unlock, which means non-BM hunters can get two out of three tier 5 talents for any given pet. So there is a discrepancy between how the tooltips read and how it actually works when you go to spend the points. I'm guessing the tooltips are correct, since that would keep the tier 5 talents BM-only, and prevent hunters from getting more than one tier 5 talent.
All of these facts are confirmed by sources in the beta. Of course, it is beta, and any of this is very subject to change, but that's the way things stand right now. By the way, how amusing is it that moths will be Ferocity pets? Ahhh, run! Ferocious moth!
Wowhead recently went live with their database of all the Achievements currently in the Wrath beta. Among those Achievements is one for clearing each dungeon and raid currently in Wrath. Each Achievement lists its requirements for completion, so what does that mean? We now know the names of all the dungeon bosses (as well as a little from the raids)! Everything placed after the cut for those who want to avoid spoilers.
The story of Hunter pets and aggro in Burning Crusade, especially since patch 2.4.2 or so, has been a very stormy one. Even deep Beastmastery Hunters have had to learn to kite, as pet aggro grows worse and worse. Growl in 2.4.2 was supposed to scale, but almost every Hunter that tested it said it didn't, despite Hortus' insistence that it did.
A full Achievements database is now live on Wowhead's Wrath of the Lich King site. When first I heard about this, I said (as you may be saying to yourselves now) "big deal, other sites have had achievements lists for a few days now." But you owe it to yourself to go check this out. They've taken their time to do it right as only Wowhead can, and it looks great, with complete information on achievement chains, meta achievements, point values, and just about anything you might want. "Shop Smart. Shop Pet... Smart" is a good example – it lists every pet that's valid for the achievement, all 103 of them. Attention to detail for the win.
Blizzard has shown their usual flair in naming these things, too; my favorites include:
The Achievements listing includes Feats of Strength, zero-point achievements that may be unachievable in the current game (like old honor system ranks), or at least unachievable by most people. Among these are several "server firsts", such as being the first on your server to reach level 80 with a given class, or the first to kill a given boss. It's nice to see that this information is going to be memorialized somewhere besides blogs and realm forums.
In other Wowhead news, talent calculators for the new Hunter pet talents are now available. Additionally, new weapons and armors now have 3D models viewable on the site (just click the "View in 3D" button on item pages), so you can check out what we'll all be seeing in a few short months. So far I haven't found anything that looks totally amazing, though I did come across something that looks rather like the walrus hat that Blizz seems to be fond of showing off in Death Knight promo pics.
The introduction of runeforging to the Wrath Beta was a bit of surprise and slightly unexpected. Instead of rune swapping -- the idea of being able to change the nature and configuration of the runes on your runeblade -- Death Knights got a solid 2 Unholy, 2 Blood, and 2 Frost runes. Runeforging itself became a weapon enchantment system whereby Death Knights could enchant their weapon with various special procs and buffs for various situations.
The long answer is perhaps a bit more complicated, and reinforces Blizzard's stated goals with the Death Knight class role and the new runeforging ability.
Last time we met to talk about Jewelcrafting in Wrath, I only knew the names of the various uncommon and rare gems. Now I have the names of the epic gems too, as well as values for the cuts. The epics are called:
Red: Cardinal Ruby
Yellow: King's Amber
Blue: Majestic Zircon
Purple: Dreadstone
Orange: Flawless Ametrine
Green: Eye of Zul
More cool names, in this blogger's opinion. Except Cardinal Ruby – that sounds a little "blah" to me. Which is not to say I won't socket them, of course; that +parry rating cut that looks quite tasty for a Death Knight tank.
Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.
Once upon a time, there was a comedian who did a bit about Troy Aikman. Mr. Aikman is a famous, former Dallas Cowboysquarterback who was forced to retire due to receiving multiple concussions over his career. The joke went like this:
"Troy, you've been a Super Bowl MVP and are one of the greatest quarterbacks of the 20th century. How do you feel having to retire after receiving your 10th concussion, and how has that incredible series of blows affected your brain?"
"Ummmm... I like... pudding!"
How is this pertinent to WotLK and hunters? Well, the new 51st talent point in the beta of the Beastmaster tree is named Beast Mastery. As written, it's kind of obscure, a little open-ended, and the programmers don't seem to have a clue what it could really mean:
"We're still working on implementing this particular talent. The talent will allow you to train a different "class" of pets which we're calling "exotic" right now. Only hunters with this talent will be able to train those pets. They won't necessarily be "stronger" (though will all have unique abilities that you can only get from exotic pets), the extra power you should get from the talent will be from the additional pet skill points (pet talent points).
"Devilsaur anyone?"
So when pressed for an answer on the WotLK beta forums for what "exotic" entails, the blue-poster basically said, "Pudding!"
But did you ever have a doubt that BigRedKitty wouldn't know what "exotic" is? We sure hope not! We're totally on the case, ready to spill the beans on "exotic" pets, and announce what you 51/15/5 Beastmaster hunters can expect to find come expansion-time.
Many players love to collect vanity pets and mounts, and in Wrath there will even be Achievements for collecting certain numbers of them. Which raises the problem of bank space – after all, we only have so many slots, and we're already using a lot of them for extra reagents, crafting items, consumables, resist sets, and so forth. So how are we supposed to find the space to store 75 vanity pets? Fortunately, Blizzard has come up with a solution.
Come Wrath, mounts and vanity pets will be learned as spells, CM Wryxian has just announced. The items that currently summon pets/mounts, like Sprite Darter Egg or Ashes of Al'ar, will serve to teach us the spells, at which point the item will disappear from your inventory and the spells will be found in your spellbook for all time (bindable to hotkeys like any other spell if you want).
This should make collectors very happy: collect all you can now, and they won't take any space whatsoever once you learn them. Be sure to check out WarcraftPets for help on how to find them (that site's creator was recently honored with an in-game NPC). And everyone will gain at least two more inventory slots that are currently devoted to their ground and flying mounts (except people whose mounts are already summonable, i.e. paladins, warlocks, and druids). Excellent move, Blizz; this is even better than the vanity pet bags people have been asking for.
Moviewatch commenters are always asking to see some action. I've decided to cave in and give you what you want! Devlin filmed this epic battle scene on the EU Coldarra beta server on the 19th.
Weighing in at a whopping 383mb and 1680x1050 resolution, this video focuses on the Death Knight's introduction questline. It deals with lore involving Arthas, the Fordring and Mograine families, as well as a new alliance. For more WotLK beta gameplay videos, check out Daniel Whitcomb's in-depth look at the quest. Note: As you might expect from that description, this video may involve spoilers about Death Knight lore and the starting area.
The gates to Northrend are open – to the lucky few who have gotten invites into the beta. For the rest of us, the best we can do is follow along on sites like, oh, here, as well as WotlkWiki and others. Now there's one more to add to the list: Wowhead has opened their Wrath site, with details on hundreds of items, quests, spells, and more, as well as the talent calculators we've talked about before
One of my particular favorites is the beta patch notes, which are nicely formatted and have links to all relevant spells, abilities, talents, and items mentioned in the notes (super-handy). New data updates are coming in all the time. There are many neat and yet-undiscovered things to be found there, so take a look around, and let us know if you come up with anything interesting.
There's nothing stunning, I'm afraid; more like some nice upgrades to current favorites. But I certainly expect be popping flasks and pots in Naxx at least as much as I currently am in Zul'Aman. Anyway, let's see what we've got. I'll compare to the BC or old-world versions where appropriate.
We found out a little bit about inscription and what materials it might need when the Wrath of the Lich King beta debuted last week, and yesterday we learned that they will be helping Enchanters use the auction house, but we were still left wondering about what was originally promoted as the central purpose of the new profession: enhancing spells. Thanks to the WotLK Wiki, we now have some information on that very intriguing functionality.
Spells will be enhanced by Glyphs, which will be created by inscribers and will be tradable (though there may be some inscriber-only Glyphs).
Glyphs come in three sizes: Minor, Lesser, and Greater. Minor Glyphs have small effects or cosmetic changes, Lesser Glyphs give moderate upgrades to spells, and Greater Glyphs give major upgrades to spells.
Each character has six Glyph slots: two Minor, two Lesser, and two Greater. The screenshot shown here is the Glyph interface, available to every character. The slots at top and bottom are for Greater Glyphs, those at top-right and top-left are for Lesser, and the sad-looking ones at bottom-left and bottom-right are for Minor glyphs.
There is an ability called Glyph Mastery that's categorized under Inscription which gives access to an additional Glyph slot for the inscriber, but it is unknown how this ability is attained. Maybe it's a specialization, like other professions have.
Remember a little while back, when someone accidentally added the Death Knight to the Classes page on the official site? Now the DK class description page is there, although it seems that this too is probably an accident (the DK entry is still gone from the Classes page). As expected, it contains nothing in the way of new information, aside from a fetching misspelling of "Alternative" and a frankly terrifying picture of what looks like a Dwarf Rogue (obviously faked; everyone knows there's no such thing).
Still nothing mentioned in "standard bars" about runes or runic power. Also the "Allowable Weapons" (listed as Axes, Defenses, Polearms, Swords, Two-Handed Axes, Two-Handed Swords) still doesn't match up with what we expected (one- and two-handed Axes, Swords, and Maces are what we've been told before). And Blizz doesn't usually call it "Plate Mail;" typically it's just "Plate." Anyway, I vote "slip-up" on this one as well – anyone want to take bets on how long it'll stay up?
No, I'm not talking about parenting and honey-do skills. In Wrath of the Lich King, each hunter family will have its own unique skill, just as Warp Stalkers currently have Warp.
In fact, some of the pet skills are so enticing that I'm beginning to think I'm going to need about 8 more stable slots! Here is a look at some of the juicier talents:
Bats will be able to stun an opponent for 2 seconds.
Bears will be able to Swipe similarly to druids, hitting three enemies in melee range.
Birds of Prey will be able to disarm opponents for 6 seconds.
Hyenas will reduce movement speed.
Moths will be increasing their own attack power, and healing themselves.
Nether Rays will have a spellcasting interrupt, preventing any spells from that school for one second.
Are you as excited as I am? Don't forget to head over to Petopia to check out the full, detailed list. What pets will you be taming?
Tip: Don't confuse pet skills with pet talents! Read up on the new pet talent trees for more information.
It can't be too long now -- people are getting let in the Wrath beta from BlizzCon last year, and everyone's opt-in registrations are in, so it's only a matter of time before the invites go out and the floodgates open. And when they do: what's your plan?
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