World of Warcraft - WoW News and Views

Rotface Kill

noreply@blogger.com (WoW News and Views) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:11:00 +0000

25 Man Festergut PTR Kill

noreply@blogger.com (WoW News and Views) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:59:00 +0000

New Icecrown Bosses Available on 3.3 PTR

noreply@blogger.com (WoW News and Views) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:56:00 +0000

Festergut is available on US PTR servers for testing and Rotface, a identically skinned monstrosity is available for testing on the EU PTR servers. Youtube Videos posted above of the fights. I haven't made time to log on an fight him myself, but my friends all claim the fight is quite easy. To be fair, hard mode isn't available yet and as well all know, anything on normal mode is more or less a joke unless you are pugging the encounter. Festergut's abilities after the jump. For Rotface's abilities see EU data.

Gaseous Blight- Damage to all players nearby. This is classic don't stand in something hazard. Your raid leader will be screaming "DON'T STAND IN THE F*ING ORANGE GOO"

Gaseous Spore- Classic DoT mechanic on a couple players. Remember having to run to the iceblock in Naxx? Now the players with spores need to run to the group because when they explode they "innoculate" the group, giving them resistance to the blight as well as an upcoming ability.

Inhale Blight- Every so often, Festergut inhales the blight. This increases his damage by 30% for 3.5 seconds. After several inhalations you get.....

Pungent Blight- Which is apparently a "violent" release of the blight through Festergut's ass which deals devastating damage if the raid is not innoculated from the spores.

Over the fight isn't too bad, though he does he hard if you are not well geared. These are classic mechanics your raid should quickly recognize.

Into the Ground... Patch 3.2

noreply@blogger.com (WoW News and Views) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:39:00 +0000

I'm starting up a regular paladin thread, appropriately named "Into the ground". Over the years I have played it, the paladin class has been risen and fallen in power and usefulness, just like every other class sans Deathknight. The reason long time players gripe about the class is the sheer volatility it has seen over the years. By the end of BC the class was falling to sheer uselessness but was given near godlike stature at the beginning of Wotlk.

Patch 3.2, which hit last month, nerfs mostly prot paladins leaving retribution and holy more or less alone. Detailed analysis after the jump.

From Blizzard's official 3.2 Patch Notes:

Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack that can only strike a single target.

Seal of Corruption and Seal of Vengeance: These seals will now only use the debuff stacks generated by the attacking paladin to determine the damage done by the seal and by the judgement.

Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.

Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now grants 10% strength in addition to its current effects. Also, the strength and stamina bonuses from this blessing will no longer be lost when Blessing of Kings is removed.

Ardent Defender: This talent now reduces damage taken below 35% health by 7/13/20% instead of 10/20/30%

Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.

Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin's strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin's stamina.

As you can see above, Retribution gains a small buff to seal of command. Even though this ability is tired, old, and should be retired, Blizzard keeps pumping life into it as hard as the fed tries to pump life into the economy. Basically paladin's get a free "cleave" from the auto attacks and crusader strike. This cleave-like ability will not proc off multi-target attacks such as Divine Storm.

Protection received an expected nerf. Since the last buff of Protection Paladin's with their own versions of Last Stand and increased threat, I've heard nothing but QQing from other tanking classes. Honestly, this is a fair complaint and the nerfs brought paladins back in line with other tanking classes in terms of threat. The righteous fury threat drop is the most significant threat nerf, but as I said, a fair one. The change for Touched by the Light should be relatively neutral to a minor nerf for most tanking paladins, depending on your gear composition. The ardent defender is a survivability nerf intended to bring back a bit more "stam stacking". Some bosses are meant to hit HARD and AD was reducing the efficacy of those bosses' abilities. I personally feel the change to Judgements of the Just, nerfing the stun proc, was unnecessary but Blizzard apparently disagrees. Finally, the Blessing of Sanctuary buff is nice, but I'm willing to bet most of us run Blessing of Kings and Blessing of Sanctuary at the same time anyway and won't notice the difference.

That's the latest and greatest for paladins on Live servers.

Patch 3.3 Class Mechanics

noreply@blogger.com (WoW News and Views) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:26:00 +0000

Patch 3.3 brings some major changes to content while not altering character classes too much.

If would like to copy your character to the PTR and try patch 3.3 out for yourself, go here.

Class Mechanics

If you like the way your class currently works, you should be happy as there aren't that many significant changes.

Warrior: Victory Rush, usually late in the leveling process can now be trained at level six. This should make the leveling process even easier. Additionally, damage shield doesn't proc any "chance on hit" abilities such as deep wounds.

Rogues: Rogues get one of the few major, positive changes. Blizzard has listened to the communities collective pleas and finally fixed the various vanish "bugs" by changing the ability to:

For the first second after this ability is used, neither Vanish nor Stealth can be broken by taking damage or being the victim of a hostile spell or ability.

This mechanic should prevent the classic "hunter pet" bug in pvp where the pet tried to eat you as soon as you vanished as well as other mechanics that immediately brought you out of stealth for no proper reason. While this is sure to bring QQing from other classes, I think its a necessary and long overdue change. Finally, stealth has one rank beginning at level one which should also make leveling easier.

Death Knight: Not too much change for the ever evolving death knight, but a couple notable changes. Strangulate now also functions as an interrupt against silence immune mobs effectively giving deathknights a runic power free mind freeze. Desecration also now lasts 20 seconds instead of 12, trying to get it into line with the desolation talent.

Paladin: Paladins have a couple undocumented changes noticed so far. Mana costs for most instant casts spells of lower ranks have been lowered. Blizzard documented this under a generalized statement.

Spell Mana Costs: These costs have been reduced for almost all lower level spell ranks. In general, if a spell decreased in cost with a higher level rank in patch 3.2.0, that spell now has the decreased cost at all ranks. In addition, spells learned before level 20 with reduced cast times and/or durations have even further reduced mana costs, proportionate to their reduction in cast time or damage.

Druid: Nature's grace has been slightly nerfed. It now only procs off non-periodical critical hits instead of all critical hits. Genesis now increases damaging and healing spells spells only while it used to increase the damage of all periodic abilities (ie Rip). For feral druids, swipe has been increased to 8 yards up from five. Restoration druids lose a tick on their rejuvenation spells, costing extra global cooldowns. The biggest nerf is to improved barkskin which has had its effective armor cut in half from 160% to 80%.

Hunter: Misdirect has been buffed. Instead of a limited amount of shots, all attacks for 4 seconds transfer threat to the ally being misdirected to. Additionally, multiple hunters can misdirect to a single ally. Beast Mastery is being buffed as the stun from intimidation now applies immediately instead of on the first swing. As with all the classes, the mana cost of many spells is being lowered.

Mage: Arcane mages get a buff having their arcane empowerment also grant a 3% DPS increase to the raid. This means arcane mages finally bring utility to the raid. Mage pets received the same PvP nerf as hunters warlocks. Avoidance now no longer applies to player based damage.

Shaman: Fire nova totem has been replaced with the spell fire nova. The spell starts a 1.5-second global cooldown when used and has a 10-second spell cooldown. It is basically a long awaited AoE spell without having to sacrifice flametongue totem. This will be especially useful for elemental shamans. On a side note, trolls get cute "troll" totems but no functional difference.

World of Warcraft Cataclysm Blizzcon 2009 Debut Trailer [HD]

noreply@blogger.com (WoW News and Views) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 04:25:00 +0000

Inaugural post & Welcome!

noreply@blogger.com (WoW News and Views) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:30:00 +0000

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