The announcement of playable Pandaren themselves weren’t really an exciting prospect for me, but seeing their animations during the amazing art panel warmed me right over. I still find the culture centered around brews pretty boring, after all, we just had Brewfest and have a race dedicated to drinking – nothing new, but I can’t wait to do some Tai Chi on my Pandaren.

I also like the idea of the Monk class, specifically the healing designed around the enemy rather than the GUI seems something that will make healing more interactive rather than staring at bars. Having no autoattack seems strange but I can’t wait to try it out since I tend to be a bit of a key masher anyway. And as for tanking, I have been a warrior since Vanilla and have played three out of the four tanking classes at max level during Wrath and Cataclysm, and I enjoy the responsibility of the role. So despite the fact I don’t like levelling much I may end up biting the bullet and take a Pandaren Monk from 1-90 at some point in the next year or two. The fact that I will have access to all three roles and therefore have low queue times and don’t have to quest at all makes this a definite possibility.

As for the lack of a ‘big bad’ and other complaints about Pandaria, bear in mind that we lost Abyssal Maw because it didn’t fit in with the Cataclysm storyline about Deathwing, so sometimes having an antagonist like that limits what developers can bring out. Pandaria is a ‘filler’ expansion, there’s no doubt about that. It’s a stopover on the way to Argus, Emerald Dream, Vashjir and Sargeras himself. But that’s not to say that it is worthless, at the very least it’ll provide a nice Nagrand-style of lush grasslands to explore for a while. And while I don’t really get the hate on Pandaren, I do find this interview on how Samwise got the idea for Pandaren pretty funny.

Other stuff from Blizzcon that’s cool: Pokemon and everything to do with it, helps that I really like collecting pets. More in-depth specializations and talents as that means I will get Silence without needing to sacrifice DPS talent points to take utility. Similarly related, I do like the Shadow Orbs being less RNG and more like a Holy Power secondary resource. PVE Scenarios seem interesting but I’m slightly worried that by diversing the player pool among various ways to earn valor it might lead to longer queue times overall. Challenge mode dungeons will be great – it’s something to do after completing achievements. Speaking of achievements, I hope account-wide achievements will solve problems related to heirlooms not being cross server, among many other things.

Not quite sure about questing giving benefits to running dungeons though. Don’t most people queue for dungeons while questing, instead of afterwards? I hope the lack of a set-in-stone PVP zone means they plan to update Wintergrasp and Tol Barad in some fashion, though that would be a wild possibility. I’m also skeptical about their lack of announcements over new player models. In the end there was a blue post about the fact that they’re working on it, which is all fine and dandy, but they could’ve shown some concept art. Personally I don’t really want Kalecgos type models – even they’re starting to get stale. If they have avoided implementing this for so long, I hope by the time they do add it in, they’re something that competes with Pandarens. An all round new skeleton if possible, not just scaled up textures and a bit more polygons.

Finally, the WoW Annual Pass. It is a desperate way for Blizzard to hang onto subscriber numbers in a year where several big budget MMOs are coming out, and probably won’t be as popular as I initially thought it was because not everyone likes Diablo, and not everyone likes World of Warcraft to subscribe to it for one year. I tend to take breaks from the game a lot, most recently a few months into Cataclysm til just over a month ago. With that said, I may end up taking up the offer because I don’t really intend to buy Diablo 3 Collector’s Edition, and I -really- want to play in the MoP beta to try out the Monk as soon as possible. It’s a decision I’ll surely regret in the long run but for the time being I’m considering taking it.

And that’s that. Another end to Blizzcon, one of the best in years. Next year with Diablo 3 released and the WoW and SC2 expansions imminent, they may end up announcing their MMO, Titan. With four IPs, those two days will be looking a lot more crowded.

For priests, shadow in particular, the only notable change is the fact we don’t have to recast Inner Fire/Focus since like Vampiric Embrace it is more like a toggle now. It’s strange that they just didn’t include it with 4.0.6, but at least they are doing it.

A slightly controversial change is the reduction in gold for soloing old raid bosses, obviously done to deter people from using up valuable instance space or encouraging them to be more social. I don’t believe inflation to be the primary reason since they already materialise gold as a guild perk and Random LFD rewards much more when we compare time spent.

I am one of those players who doesn’t really play WoW much outside the guild raiding, and I assume Blizzard is wanting more of those people either by forcibly segregating content so you can’t do both 10 and 25 full runs or removing incentives from farming solo raid content. But its beginning to feel a bit like Vanilla in that there isn’t a lot of things to do when you’re not raiding. Archeology might as well be another reputation grind in how meaningless and boring it is. However unlike Vanilla we are starting to get competition from MMOs that actually somewhat decent and reaching on WoW’s level. Rift was a game I felt would be a game I would be playing if I didn’t play WoW already, and the only thing stopping me from doing so is my guild. I’m sure many others have the same feeling.

Will 4.1 be able to keep the attention of those who aren’t in a raiding guild? The hints of a mount grind in ZG/ZA seem like Blizzard are attempting to try and do so. But luckily with the focus of Firelands in progression raiding we might begin to see more raiding PUGs for current dungeons, much like towards the end of Wrath when 25man Trial of the Crusader was still being ran.

Although players are still busy digging through all of the Cataclysm raid and heroic content, some are already starting to wonder what we’ll see added to the game in the 4.1 patch and beyond. While we have some hints, what do you expect to see added over the life of the expansion? How many patches? How many new dungeons? What will happen to your favorite professions? And how will the expansion’s storyline continue to unfold — and which loose ends will be wrapped up by the time the 5.0 patch is released?

Well, the facts currently known is that there will probably be three major content patches, 4.1 due around April/May bringing us Ragnaros and ZG/ZA instances. Who would’ve thought we would be looking forward to raiding old instances for new loot this time last year? Perhaps we should’ve seen it earlier when they retrofitted Naxxramas and Onyxia for the current content tier, but I think if we’re going to bring back old content now isn’t too bad a time to do it, as long as the time saved is spent on improving the quality of future patches and not say, Titan.

From the 4.1 leaks as well as Blizzcon’s 2010 D&R panel, we know there will be an event where mobs from the elemental plane of fire invade Hyjal, leading to a new daily quest hub in Firelands. There will be seven bosses and the whole place takes place in a floating land mass similar to Oculus. As well as Zul’Aman/Gurub, Abyssal Maw will be the third 5man coming in 4.1, taking place in Vashjir. It comes with 4 bosses and it will feel different from TotT due to the whole place taking place outside.

4.2 brings us War of the Ancients, a new Caverns of Time raid. With 4.1 taking over our summer, 4.2 will probably come out around Blizzcon 2011, which is on October 21-22. There I see either Titan or Starcraft 2′s expansion being officially announced, and even possibly WoW’s 4th Expansion. After all, Diablo due next year, and Blizzard don’t have a lot of IPs up their sleeve. If it is the expansion then perhaps it will be the Emerald Dream, and the whole naturey flowerey tone will get us PUMPED!!! for War of the Ancients.

War of the Ancients role in Cataclysm’s story is the Demon Soul, the process which became the pivotal turning point from Neltharion into Deathwing. Perhaps Blizzard’s enhanced maps feature will be released around this time, providing boss detail in dungeon maps. Maybe there will be a bunch of dungeons coming with this patch to supplement the raid, such as another Twilight’s Hammer based dungeon in Deepholme.

The big question by now is will we see changes to how guild EXP will work? Blizzard want people to be casual and flexible with how they raid but current daily GEXP caps are incompatible with weekly lockouts. You risk guilds capping out very fast and wasting GEXP one day and vice versa for the rest of the days you’re not raiding. At this point most larger guilds will be level capped, so will Blizzard fix it for the small guilds?

4.3 will feature Cataclysm’s last foe, Deathwing. Perhaps there will be an Onyxia type of raid before 4.3 to tide us over, maybe something as simple as a new Tol Barad boss, but this content patch will probably come out February or so. Blizzard have never been the type to release things around the holiday season, after all.

Whilst the Twilight’s Hammer seem to be pretty much everywhere in Cataclysm, the base of the black dragons is mostly in Twilight Highlands. It is where the duel between Alexstrasza and Deathwing takes place, and it is said that both were pretty wounded from the ordeal. So perhaps Deathwing will find solace in nearby Grim Batol, and look after the remaining clutches of his Twilight brood. Also within his lair will be more servants of the Old God, hinted in the Grim Batol dungeon. And more probably Twilight’s Hammer cultists. Can’t get enough of those guys!

Here is how I begin my rotation:

1. Vampiric Touch, Devouring Plague and Shadow Word: Pain to get dots rolling before I build up buffs
2. Cast Shadowfiend to get it on cooldown, you will be reducing the CD timer through Mind Flay crits with Sin and Punishment talent
3. MF twice to build up Dark Evangelism
4. By now you might get a Shadow Orb, but most likely you won’t and VT will be ending so recast VT
5. MF until you get an orb, then Mind Blast to get Empowered Shadow
6. Once your dots are refreshed so that they have around 10 seconds duration, then use Dark Archangel and rebuild Dark Evangelism stacks

After that it is just a case of maintaining DoTs and casting MB on cooldown. Once your SF and DA cooldowns are up then use those. Occasionally cast Shadow Word: Death to get the 10% mana back from Masochism talent, if the situation permits (you are not going to kill yourself from it). If the target is sub 25% you will definitely want to try and include the double SW:D as part of your rotation from that point onwards.

DoT Clipping

Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague as of Cataclysm operate in the same way Shadow Word: Pain does when it gets refreshed. Recasting VT or DP before the duration has expired will cause it to behave as if it was one continuous dot and you won’t lose damage ticks. Conversely you will lose ticks if you let the dot drop off, so therefore you should always aim to refresh before it expires, and try to refresh just before it expires so you dont just end doing say, VT MF VT (while original VT has 10 seconds left), when you could fit in more MF inbetween.

Multidotting

There’s not a lot that has to be said about multi dotting. It operates on the same way as your normal rotation only that you will be recasting dots on various mods so much you probably won’t be using MF much! It’s beneficial to have the boss or another high priority target on your focus so you can keep track of it. Perhaps in the future I could delve into more but there’s not much to say about it.

When to use Mind Spike

Mind Spike is tricky in a raiding situation. I’ve found the spell pretty useful on the adds in the Al’akir fight since it allows me full control of when I want the add to die, which is crucial to the fight. Even on trash mobs in most cases you want to use your dots more, so it seems to me Mind Spike is probably not that useful outside of soloing and 5 man dungeons. I haven’t really thought on this matter too much though.

When to use Mind Sear

Mind Sear, while repeatedly nerfed to the brink of uselessness, is still pretty valuable for low HP trash packs. Fights like Magmaw and Cho’gall for instance, benefit more from Mind Sear than VT/SW:P multidotting since you can still concentrate on the boss while still helping out with AoE. The recent change to allow you to target friendly players with it has really improved its use despite the constant damage reductions.

Mana Management

The Elitist Jerks thread goes into detail on this, but in a nutshell:

Casting MB while VT is up provides replenishment, a shadow of its WotLK version (it’s not very good).
Shadowfiend and Dark Archangel provide you with reasonable mana return.
SW:D with Masochism provides mana return if you are running reasonably low.
Dispersion restores a significant amount of mana but you can’t do damage during the period. In most cases you want to save this CD for survival purposes more than mana. However you can use this while stunned, so you may want to use it during this period since you wont be able to do anything else anyway.

I’m not a big fan of dailies, especially on a PVP server where the Horde greatly outnumber Alliance, but I enjoyed the Sunwell dailies and how it was done. As for rehashing the troll instances, I think it was a long time coming, given the lack of Gun’drak in Wrath and the lack scope to create a new troll instance in the new Cataclysm areas. The ability to grab another raptor or tiger mount is a bonus for some people, but I noticed in the MMOChamp patch notes that the awesome bear mount model was missing! Surely not, Blizz?!

Oh yes, and the small matter of the new caster legendary. But without any more details to go on it is hard to be excited. Anyway, the priest changes weren’t all that great:

Discipline

• Absolution (Mastery) *New* – Enables your Dispel Magic spell to be cast on friendly targets to remove 2 harmful magical effects.
• Dispel Magic can now only be casted on yourself to remove harmful effects, and now only removes 1 beneficial spell from enemies, down from 2.
• Power Word: Shield now costs 34% of base mana, up from 25%. Now lasts 15 sec, down from 30 sec.
• Divine Aegis now lasts 15 sec, up from 12 sec.

Holy

• Body and Soul now increases the target’s movement speed by 12/25%, down from 30/60%.

Shadow

• Shadow Power now increases Spell damage by 15%, down from 25%.

I’m pretty apathetic towards the dispel and shield changes, mainly since I rarely PVP as shadow and shield kinda sucks anyway. It’s not nice to lose any utility but given some of the other changes I feel like we got off fairly lightly, but as always it is still too early to tell. However as a Holy offspec however I don’t like the change to B&S at all. Running at 25% more speed for 4 seconds is hardly worth it at all. Thankfully for all the haters 4.1 is still some ways away, possibly 4-5 months even.

EDIT: Boubouille updated with some new items! Highlights include some trinkets from the new tier and Rare and Epic BoA Guild Tabards, which boost guild rep gains by 50/100%. That’s pretty insane. It also seems like theres a bunch of stuff for the card game:

Fool’s Gold – Consumable so probably TCG common
War Party Hitching Post – Consumable so probably TCG common
Landro’s Lichling – Likely TCG Uncommon
Savage Raptor – Has a iLevel of 20 so probably TCG rare

I haven’t really been playing a lot of World of Warcraft outside of raiding with the guild. There have been many distractions, but also it seems as a whole the expansion seems to be a lot lacklustre. One of the first things I noticed upon release was how there wasn’t much ambience to the new cities. Whereas Dalaran left an impression with the water fountain, the toy shop and the underbelly amongst other things, the capital cities remain fairly static and boring. I love the makeover, for Stormwind at least, but idling in the new cities just isn’t the same without Minigob Manabonk sheeping me.

I did a bit of the new Azeroth and I absolutely love Thousand Needles. Sailing up and down the zone is great and relaxing and I can only wish Blizzard gave us the ability to use that River Boat anywhere and also have the ability to fish from it. One of the potentially coolest vanity item available and it is restricted to the one zone that people will spend a few days on. Completely wasted!

Archeology has to be the least well-disguised grind ever. Its release iteration was so horrible and unrewarding it felt like you were punishing yourself for attempting to even break from the monotony of idling in a city. Presently it is still pretty bad if you were hoping to get vanity items out of it, but at least you get some gold out of it. Having minimum profession requirements for some items is terrible though. Either make it transparent to the player about the possible rewards or don’t have them. I still can barely bring myself to complete more than two or three artifacts each time.

So overall that’s what I currently feel about the game in general, next time I will probably go into more about Raids & Dungeons. It’s much more exciting and will probably be more positive than this post!

It has been a while since I was a new player, as I started playing during the US open beta way back in mid-2004. Even when the EU retail version came out a year later I still had a miniscule idea of how the game mechanics worked, but it never really mattered since raiding hadn’t hit its full stride by that time. My first character was a rogue, and throughout the levelling I had put my points into the dagger tree, a friend’s recommendation. But as swords and maces tended to be better in raw damage I never used Ambush throughout those 60 levels. Luckily there will probably be a tooltip for it now! It’s been a long time coming.

Now to try and analyze what talents I will be using on my characters..

Priest (Shadow): http://www.wowtal.com/#k=_5bkW2KJ.9mn.priest

The talents have been drastically improved to the point where it can be quite a tough decision to make in regards to point placement. Luckily there seems to be only one route to go with the other trees if you’re shadow, and that is for the Inner Fire talent. It helps that the talents you take for Inner Fire is a survivability and a damage increasing talent.

Psychic Scream doesn’t seem to be changed much and still looks worthless to me, but it does unlock Silence which has an inbuilt interrupt now, making it more attractive to take. But 3 points for something freely available to most classes seems worthless unless they do more with it, such as adding a buff for a successful interrupt or something.

Therefore the blind, deaf and mute are the purist among us.

It’s amazing the quality between how crap our first time kills are and our subsequent farming kills.

Times thrice.

After the event boss we did a daily heroic – which was Azjol Nerub – and found we were randomly getting Lovely Charms. It was only when the warrior thunderclapped the small adds just before the drop after Hadronox did I realise that: 1) Killing blows were required and 2) They had to be a non-grey level. So knowing this, the best places to farm would be instances where there were quick kill quick respawn mobs like the Stratholme zombies or areas where you control a vehicle or use bombs to mow down hordes of enemies like the bombing run quests in TBC. I opted to farm the Lovely Charms in Ulduar:

This technique may end up being hotfixed, but it’s doubtful, due to the many ways of exploiting it. Some people do bombing run quests in Icecrown, or even running over the bone guards in the Battle Before the Citadel daily. But the fastest is just spamming fireballs in Ulduar. These Lovely Charms convert into Lovely Charm Bracelets, which are then traded for the Love Token currency. In order to complete the meta achievement, you will need:

My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose: Solo either Old Kingdom or Utgarde Keep normal until the San’layn.
Dangerous Love: Just complete the questline, gain 5 Love Tokens as well.
Nation of Adoration: 4 Lovely Charm Bracelets (Also gain 20 Love Tokens in the process)
Shafted!: 10 Silver Shafted Arrow: 10 Love Tokens
The Rocket’s Pink Glare: 10 Love Rockets: 10 Love Tokens
Be Mine!: 1-3 Bag of Heart Candies: 2-6 Love Tokens
Sweet Tooth, Lonely?: 1-2 Box of Chocolates: 10-20 Love Tokens
Flirt With Disaster, Fistful of Love: 15 Handful of Rose Petals: 6 Love Tokens
I Pitied The Fool: 5 Love Fool: 50 Love Tokens
Lonely?: 1 Romantic Picnic Basket: 10 Love Tokens
Flirt With Disaster: 1 Perfume: 1 Love Token

In total, 113 Love Tokens. Considering Nation of Adoration and Dangerous Love, thats 92 extra Lovely Charm Bracelets that are needed to be converted to Love Tokens to complete everything. It’s not hard, just time consuming! I did it all within a few hours: