Ciderhelm posted this on Jan 05, 2009 - 10:12 PMAt this time, it does not appear that 3.0.8 is launching this week. Grab the mats while they're still inexpensive!
This is a repeat of older news, but there is a 75 Stamina enchant for weapon and a 40 Stamina enchant for bracers potentially coming up tomorrow. In addition to the 10 Abyss Crystals an enchanter will need to purchase the two enchants (5 per), you will need to pick up 16 Dream Shards, 4 Greater Cosmic Essences, and 4 Abyss Crystals.
Lore posted this on Jan 05, 2009 - 10:46 AM
With 3.0.8 most likely dropping [edit: next week], here's a reminder of a few of the more important changes to look out for.
General
New Tanking Enchants: Enchant Bracer - Major Stamina (+40 Stam) and Enchant Weapon - Titanguard (+75 Stam)
Many enchants have had material costs lowered and in some cases changed to Dream Shards
New Blacksmithing Recipe: Titanium Plating (+40 Block Value to Shield)
All Titansteel helms now have a meta and normal socket, and stats have been rebalanced to compensate
New Cooking Recipe: Fish Feast (+40 Stam, +80 AP, +46 Spell Power)
Rare (blue-quality) gems now available for 10 Emblems of Heroism each
Relics of Ulduar can now be turned in for Sons of Hodir rep
Range on single-target Taunts increased to 30 yards
Warrior
Not much on the Protection front, but Fury is seeing a handful of buffs (Titan's Grip miss penalty removed, etc)
Paladin
New Spell: Hand of Reckoning (single-target taunt)
Avenging Wrath no longer causes Forbearance, but puts Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Hand of Protection on a 30-second cooldown (Hand of Protection may still be cast on other players)
Divine Protection swing speed penalty removed, Divine Shield now reduces all damage done by 50% while active. Sacred Duty no longer interacts with DS/DP, Stamina bonus increased to 8% as compensation
Druid
Bonus armor (from Rings, Trinkets, etc) is no longer increased by Bear Form modifier, Bear Form modifier increased to compensate.
Survival of the Fittest now gives an armor bonus in addition to its previous effects
Feral AP reworked, now based on weapon DPS. Feral staves have had their itemization shifted around to be more attractive to other classes in addition to Druids. Druids can now equip Polearms as well.
Protector of the Pack now functions independent of the number of players in your party
Death Knight
Icebound Fortitude changed to 20% base damage reduction, but increases with Defense skill
Bone Shield lowered to 20% damage reduction
Rune Strike damage bonus lowered to 150%, threat caused increased to 150%
Bonus armor (from Rings, Trinkets, etc) is no longer increased by Frost Presence modifier, Frost Presence modifier increased to compensate.
Blood changes: Healing from Blood Aura and Blood Presence doubled, Vampiric Blood now gives a 20% HP bonus in addition to its existing effects
New spell: Raise Ally, raises a party member as a ghoul. Raise Dead will no longer raise party members.
New rune: Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle, adds 25 Defense Skill and +2% Stamina to a two-handed weapon
I really don't know what to say to it, but it is simply too fabulous to not put to the frontpage. This image is credited to Briggs of Azshara (EU). The marmot ultrasound is credited to Anik of Rexxar (US). The newscaster is France's own Melissa Theuriau.
Lore and I refuse to comment on rumors and speculation at this time.
Lore posted this on Jan 02, 2009 - 2:35 PM
Daelo (WoW's Lead Encounter Designer) dropped by the Raid & Dungeon forums with some of the first real information we've learned about the encounters in Ulduar:
Source: Daelo The reward for completing the hard modes are not going to be just achievement points, titles, or mounts, but improved, additional item rewards.
I think it's safe to say that Ulduar will be a bit more difficult overall than Naxxramas, even without the hard modes. We're still going to tune the zone for accessibility(*), but a raid group that's done Naxxramas, Malygos, and Sartharion and obtained the gear from those encounters should be well prepared for Ulduar. Not only is the raid's gear better, but players should now have some raiding experience under their belts. We also have a much more accurate picture of what guilds are capable of from a healing, damage, and tanking perspective then when WotLK first went live. If Naxxramas was the introduction to raiding 101 class for players who have never raided before, think of Ulduar as the second year class.
* There will be one optional encounter that is only tuned as a "hard mode" encounter.
Most of it was already somewhat implied, but confirmation of hard modes (which was given in an earlier post) and achievements giving extra loot and such is nice. The optional "always hard" encounter is pretty exciting as well.
With 3.0.8 release quite likely on Tuesday, it's starting to sound like 3.1 PTR won't be too far behind. Stay tuned!
Lore posted this on Jan 02, 2009 - 9:13 AM
Ghostcrawler made the following comment in the Damage Dealing forums in response to the question "Why is there so much haste on my gear?" The question was originally asked by a Retribution Paladin, but the response applies to all classes:
Source: Ghostcrawler Couple of things:
1) If your gear didn't have haste, it would probably have armor pen instead. If you are imagining your gear having Str or Stam instead of the haste, you are probably picturing Ulduar or season 6 gear.
2) We aren't offering the best itemized gear now because we want to have something left for you to work up to. We don't want the next tier of gear to look exactly like this one, but with +2 more of each stat.
3) We do think haste and armor pen might be a little low in what you get per rating point (at least for melee). That is something we're looking at.
So, Tier 7 is sub-optimal because it's supposed to be, and Ulduar gear will probably be better, but we might see some love for Haste and Armor Penetration as well.
In a similar tone, there was another comment directed toward Sunder/Expose Armor as an aside in another thread, indicating that Sunder and Expose may be converted to a percentage-based Armor reduction (similar to the change made to the Armor Penetration stat in 3.0) sometime in the future.
Happy New Year! In this podcast, we discuss current raids and raid design, as well as our expectations for Ulduar. You have been attacked by a pack of wild Kurinnaxx.
Ciderhelm posted this on Dec 29, 2008 - 6:38 AM
I've been hearing complaints about the number of melee players many guilds are working with in Wrath of the Lich King. It's always difficult to gauge forum discussions on these types of subjects, though, because guilds where melee counts aren't particularly concerning probably aren't contributing to these discussions.
In your normal raid group, how many players are normally within melee range of targets? (Tanks included)
Have the Death Knights in your raid group come primarily from ranged classes, or were they previously another melee class?
What are your thoughts on the subject? What do you think an appropriate balance would be?
Why does it matter? Encounters such as Grobbulus and Kel'thuzad are substantially more difficult with a heavier melee composition, and being alert to a potential problem helps us know if we need to voice our concern for future encounter development.
Ciderhelm posted this on Dec 26, 2008 - 6:10 AM
In the awkward tradition of Marmot fan art being unexpectedly posted to our galleries, Anik of Rexxar has raised the bar to a new (and fantastic) high.
