Posts with tag blue
Posted Oct 16th 2007 2:35PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Paladin, Patches, Forums
I don't think I've ever used an exclamation point in a headline before, but this deserves it. It appears that Paladins' Retribution tree will be getting some passive threat reduction, as of
patch 2.3. Posted just recently in the official forums
by Eyonix:
After further patch testing and some serious discussion, we've decided to add threat reduction deep in the paladin's retribution tree. As a result, fanaticism will now reduce threat caused by all actions by 6/12/18/24/30%, in addition to its current effect of course.How does that sound? 30% passive threat retribution seems pretty darned solid to me. Let's hear it for Blizzard -- looks like they do listen to what their customers want after all.
Posted Sep 27th 2007 4:43PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Patches, Odds and ends, News items, Forums
Though the torrent of tidbits coming from Blizz Central has slowed, there are still a few new and interesting items for everyone (particularly Hunters, Mages, and melee people) to peruse today.
- [Hunter] Trueshot Aura will be free to cast and is going to last until canceled. (source)
- [Hunter] Serpent Sting, Immolation Trap and Explosive Trap are going to gain additional damage based on ranged attack power. (source)
- [Mage] Fire Ward and Frost Ward now gain additional benefit from spell damage bonuses (source)
- [Mage] Detect Magic removed, all players will see their target's beneficial effects at all times (source)
- [Rogue] one other change to poisons though is that they will last for one hour now, increased from 30 minutes. (source)
- all disarm immunity effects in the game were changed to 50% disarm duration reduction (non stacking) (source)
- The Guild Banks are still in the works and planned for patch 2.3. (source)
- Duration of wizard and mana oils created by enchanters has been increased. (source)
- Auction House will now sort server side. If multiple pages exist you will be able to sort across all pages.
- Auction House post times have been changed to 12, 24, and 48 hours. Deposit prices remain the same for each time increment.
- You will now be able to ctrl-click a recipe to preview the item the recipe will create in the dressing room.
- Ogri'la Faction Vendor: This vendor now sells potions useable anywhere for a large number of Apexis Shards. 50 shards, as good as super mana/heal pots. (source for the above 4)
The big news here, as I see it, is that there will no longer be full disarm immunity in the game, at all, period. I sense a drop in value for
Steel Weapon Chains. The TSA change makes perfect sense: it is called an aura, after all. And being able to sort AH searches across pages is also long, long overdue. How do you all feel about this latest preview of
patch 2.3?
Posted Sep 27th 2007 3:30PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Paladin, Patches, Forums
By popular demand, here is the all-Paladin edition of our ongoing series "
Patch 2.3 and you." Some of these changes were in our previous Palockter Omnibus, which seems to have angered my pally brethren; and some of them are new (thanks to Aurondil for the tips). On with the show:
- We're pretty much focused on Retribution with 2.3, but some more general changes are being made like lowering the mana cost for Exorcism, Holy Wrath, and Hammer of Wrath.
- Another Ret change (just to keep the momentum going) will be an increase to the duration of Vengeance to 30 seconds. (Drysc)
- You're amazing, that's absolutely correct [referring to Crusader Strike cooldown being lowered to 6 seconds] (Drysc)
- Well along with a few other Ret changes we're putting the benefits of Improved Seal of the Crusader right into the base spell, and the talent will instead give the benefit of Sanctified Crusader. That of course means Sanctified Crusader needs something else, and it's being renamed Sanctified Seals, which will increase your change to critically hit will all spells and melee by 1/2/3% and reduces the chance your Seals can be dispelled by 33/66/100% (Drysc)
- Pursuit of Justice (Retribution) is now 3 ranks and increases movement speed by 5/10/15% and also reduces the chance you'll be hit by spells by 1/2/3%.
- Vindication (Retribution) frequency and duration increased and now reduces all attributes by 5/10/15%, not just Strength and Agility. (Salthem)
And there you have it. Your very own Paladin edition of P2.3AY. And you're right, there were certainly enough changes to merit it. Well, Retnoobs (I kid), are you satisfied with these changes, or do you think you'll still be underpowered and unloved?
Posted Sep 26th 2007 11:20PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Priest, Patches, Odds and ends, Forums
With the bonanza of upcoming changes coming out, there are a few categories that don't have enough changes to merit posts of their own. These are their stories.
- We're adding new relics to support all talent trees in patch 2.3 for Shaman, Paladins and Druids. In addition, (not that this will sweep you off your feet), most of the arena-system relics have been renamed so there is a more consistent naming convention. (Eyonix)
- Those who completed the [Tempest Keep] attunement process will have access to the title "Champion of the Naaru". Also, the plan is to hard-cap it at 70, meaning you can't go back at 80 and "cheese" the title. (Eyonix)
- We're looking into potential improvements for earth shield, and even lightning shield (Eyonix)
- Fear Ward will be available to all priests at level 20, but there are some changes in addition. Current plans are to reduce duration to 3 minutes, and increase the cooldown to 3 minutes.
To give the dwarves and draenei something else to even it out, they'll see a new ability called Chastise (also given at level 20) which will cause holy damage and incapacitate the target for 2 seconds. (Drysc)
Yay! Fear Ward for all! Racials are still a stupid idea, in my opinion, but this takes some of the sting out of them. A new title, and some new relics are both very welcome; the current relics are in many ways a bit silly.
Posted Sep 26th 2007 11:05PM by Robin Torres
Filed under: Patches, News items, PvP, Forums
The
patch 2.3 lovefest continues with some PvP action, starting off with the Arena. Blue posters Drysc and Kalgan
have released information about Season 3 and what changes will be for it in patch 2.3:
Season 3:
- The Rating (not the points) required to purchase Season 3 weapons will be 1850.
- The Rating required to purchase Season 3 shoulders will be 2000.
- The Rating will not be required to wear the items, just to initially purchase them.
- The Personal Rating will be used to purchase the items, not the team rating.
Continue reading Patch 2.3 and you: PvP edition
Posted Sep 26th 2007 10:30PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Shaman, Patches, Forums
Earlier today, the up-close-and-personal Enhancement shammies
got some boosts, and Elemental improvements were promised for
patch 2.3 as well. And here they are! Eyonix delivers:
- Being a level 70 elemental shaman myself, I'm particularly excited as currently I feel the class is in good shape, but in need of a few minor tweaks. I'd say the one I'm most pleased with (especially after seeing the results of change on an internal build) concerns lightning overload. When 2.3 launches it will have a 4/8/12/16/20% chance to occur, though the additional spell will cause half damage, still ending up being a noticeable increase to overall dps
- Also, the additional spell will cause no threat whatsoever.
- [Regarding] the mana spring totem. Previously it restored 12 mana every two seconds at maximum rank, for your entire party. As of patch 2.3 it will restore your groups mana by 20 every 2 seconds.
This equates to 50mana/5 for each member of your party without the talent points in restorative totems.
- The second change impacts water shield. This spell will no longer cost any mana to cast (which also means the five-[second] rule will not be affected) and the mana granted per globe has been substantially increased. Additionally, the spells duration has been shortened to one minute and at the end of its duration it now grants mana for any remaining globes.
- Elemental Focus will now reduce the mana cost of the next two damage spells by 40%. Now before theorycrafting begins, this is actually a buff except in cases where your chance to land a critical strike with spells was extremely high.
- Frostshock will no longer be subject to diminishing returns which I'm sure players will find useful, especially in pvp.
- Lastly, we are making a change that will cause a reduction in dps, however, the elemental shamans overall dps will still be improving with the change that we're making to lightning overload. We're reducing the casting time of Lightning Bolt to 2.5 seconds (from 3 seconds), and chain lightning to 2.0 (from 2.5 seconds), causing benefit from spell damage to be reduced appropriately. The mana cost for these two spells are being lowered as well.
The lightning mastery talent's cast time will now be reduced by .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 seconds. So, casting time for the spells ends up being the same as before. (All of the above from this Eyonix post)
- We're increasing the additional mana granted by water shield for both the Tidefury Raiment and the Totem of the Thunderhead. (Eyonix)
Now that is what I call a lot of changes. Well, my LB-loving friends, are you happy with this stuff? Not all of these changes are Elemental-specific, of course; the mana spring totem change, for instance, helps
everyone, Shaman or not. How do you think these changes will interact to help or hurt Elemental shamans?
In other Shaman news,
Eyonix has said basically "no cc 4 u", at least until
Wrath:
- If we give shaman a cc abillity it won't be until Wrath of the Lich King.
Posted Sep 26th 2007 9:30PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Hunter, Paladin, Warlock, Patches, News items, Forums
While you may not be getting quite so many changes as some other classes out there, your changes beat theirs in...sheer unexpectedness? I dunno. Here's what's slated for
patch 2.3 for light-swingers, gunslingers, and masters of the dark:
- [Hunter] We are planning to change Wyvern Sting so that it will be instant cast. (Drysc)
- [Hunter] Arcane Shot (ranks 6+) will dispel 1 magic effect in addition to the normal damage. (Drysc)
- [Warlock] There is a change for Ritual of Souls which will significantly reduce the time to cast and complete it. (Nethaera)
- [Paladin] We're pretty much focused on Retribution with 2.3, but some more general changes are being made like lowering the mana cost for Exorcism, Holy Wrath, and Hammer of Wrath.
- Another Ret change (just to keep the momentum going) will be an increase to the duration of Vengeance to 30 seconds. (Drysc)
- [Paladin] You're amazing, that's absolutely correct [referring to Crusader Strike cooldown being lowered to 6 seconds] (Drysc)
That's a lot to digest. That Arcane Shot is pretty crazy, huh? Kalgan says it'll work like "an offensive dispel", similar to Purge. I suppose that should get some more people using it again, at least in PvP. Will the rest of us have any buffs left, or will a fight with a hunter suddenly be like Garr? Either way, change is good. Bring it on.
Update: Since posting this, Drysc has announced another pleasant change:
- How about 20 and 24 slot ammo pouches and quivers?
Posted Sep 26th 2007 7:42PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Cooking, Engineering, Patches, Forums
There are a few interesting changes on the horizon of
patch 2.3 for the gadget (and explosive) fans among you. The engineers are a long-suffering bunch, and it seems every patch promises engineering improvements, but fails to deliver. In 2.3, at least, we know exactly what we should be getting: flying mounts, as you know about from
earlier this evening, and now repair bots. And there's a bit in here for cooks, as well:
- And for your dedication, flying mounts for engineers only will be available in patch 2.3. There will be normal and epic versions of this mount for you to parade around and show how proud you are to have passed all the exams and call yourself an engineer. (Bornakk)
- I also heard this rumor that some Gan'arg Analyzers in Blade's Edge Mountains stumbled upon plans of a new Field Repair Bot and are hoarding them for their own purposes. Anybody plan to investigate this in patch 2.3? (Bornakk)
- I saw me one uh them new repair bots! I swears it! It wasn't tweren't not only repairin' items, it was hawkin' wares! I never didn't not did not didn't see nothing not like it never in my life! (Drysc)
- You'll need cooking to be at a relatively high level to complete the cooking daily quests that are coming in 2.3, so I recommend leveling it up. ;-) (Bornakk)
Yay! Yay yay yay! Er...sorry about that. Flying mounts and new repair bots would have to be my two biggest engineering wants for BC. And what do you think they'll be selling? Food/water and reagents is my guess. That would be amazing. How are you engineers feeling now? And speaking of food and water: cooking daily quests? Awesome.
Posted Sep 26th 2007 7:10PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Warrior, Patches, News items, Forums
What, you thought just because no one understands your job you were going to be excluded from the
patch 2.3 love-fest? Not a chance. Get in here, meatshields!
(See below for the new Weapon Mastery nerf.)
- [Warrior] Yes, we do plan to reduce the chance for Mace Specialization to occur in patch 2.3, but it will provide 7 rage instead of 6. (Bornakk)
- [Warrior] We also plan to have healing reduction effects affect all drain spells and abilities. As the example that most people bring up, Mortal Strike will affect Drain Life. (Bornakk)
- [Warrior] While arms/fury warriors aren't meant to be as good as protection warriors at tanking, we do plan to make an additional to Tactical Mastery that may help them out. This talent will grant greatly increased threat from Mortal Strike and Bloodthirst when in Defensive Stance. (Bornakk)
- [Warrior] It may also simplify things a bit to when we make Devastate combine the effects of Sunder Armor into it's effect and be affected by all talents and items that affect Sunder Armor. We plan to make this happen in 2.3. (Bornakk)
I confess, I don't really understand what Bornakk means when he says "combine the effects of Sunder Armor" into Devastate's effect. Anyone? Does he mean that Sunder will basically be never used if you have Deva?
Update: yes. "The idea is for the people who have Devastate it will be able to replace Sunder Armor on your bar" (
source). And what do you think about the Mace Spec change: buff or nerf, overall?
Update: Since posting this, a new change has come to light. And it isn't a happy one.
- The Arms talent Weapon Mastery is going to be significantly changed. Instead of providing 50/100% chance to avoid Disarm effects, it is going to reduce the duration of Disarm effects by 25/50%. The reason for this is that having full immunity with this talent really took the idea of disarming out of the game and we want it to be more viable. (Bornakk)
Posted Sep 26th 2007 6:25PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Rogue, Patches, News items, Forums
My oh my, it's a veritable information storm out there in the forums. We've already talked about
Shaman and
Priest buffs in
patch 2.3. Here are a few changes that are coming for the sneakier ones among us:
- we actually have some changes coming in 2.3 for Deadly Throw. The speed at which it travels is being increased significantly, so it will reach your target much faster, and the snare duration is being increased slightly. One second longer if I remember correctly. (Drysc)
- It won't be able to activate Ruthlessness anymore though, no more chain deadly throws. (Kalgan)
- Do you mean the amazing change to Shadowstep so that it can now be used at any time, not only while stealthed? In addition, after use of Shadowstep threat caused by the next Ambush, Garrote or Backstab will be reduced by 50%. The cooldown will however be increased to 40 seconds.
Also on the Subtlety front is a change to Dirty Deeds so that it will also be increasing damage of special attacks by 10/20% against targets that are below 35% health.
We're also taking a look at bumping up Hemorrhage a bit, but no details yet on what that may be. (Drysc)
- Fleet Footed will now be a 15% speed increase instead of 8%. (Kalgan)
- In 2.3 Blind will no longer require a reagent. It will also be changed to a physical attack, will share the same diminish category as Cyclone, and diminish in PvE as well as PvP. (Drysc)
- we've updated [Blind] to be a ranged physical attack (also no longer counts as a poison) (Kalgan)
That's quite a bit of stuff. I'm especially pleased to see Shadowstep increased in viability, so I no longer have to wince whenever a SS rogue joins one of my groups. Deadly Throw gets both a buff and a nerf, which I suppose will make it more generally useful, but less useful in the specific case of DT kiting. The Dirty Deeds buff is extremely interesting; +10% when the target is below 35% translates to a 3.5% increase in damage overall to special attacks, which is not at all shabby for one talent point (and that's not even including DDs' current, lackluster effect of energy reduction on CS and Garotte). As for the Blind changes, all I have to say is that it's about time. I have no opinion on Fleet Footed, since I've never used it, but maybe someone else does.
Posted Sep 26th 2007 3:50PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Shaman, Patches
Back at Blizzcon, some improvements were previewed for Enhancement shammies that were going to go in "a future patch". It has become apparent as things progress that this patch is probably going to be 2.3, and now we have confirmation of that from Eyonix. Specifically, the details he confirmed for patch 2.3 are as follows:
- Shamanistic rage will also reduces all damage taken by 30% for the duration of the ability (30 seconds), in addition to its current effect
- Spirit Weapons will also reduce melee threat by a total of 30% rather than 15% (source)
- There will be changes that benfefit [sic] the elemental and restoration shaman as well. And yes, more enchancement improvements are absolutely going into patch 2.3. (source)
- Yes, all shaman will be able to equip 2-handed axes and maces (proper training required of course), without having to spend a talent. In it's place, a seemingly solid replacement talent called elemental focus. Basically, what it offers is this -- after landing a melee critical strike, you'll enter a "focused state". The focused state will reduce the mana cost of your next shock spell by 60%. (source)
There is some confusion over whether Spirit Weapons' threat reduction affects yellow damage; Eyonix reports that extensive internal testing shows that it affects white damage and Stormstrike and Windfury procs. He also promises to drop in on a thread discussing Elemental improvements, so keep an eye out for that.
Posted Sep 25th 2007 8:30AM by Robin Torres
Filed under: Blizzard, News items, AddOns
CM Drysc announced on the WoW General Forum that they are developing a Firefox add-on for searching the
Armory.
For those of you who are not familiar with
Mozilla's Firefox, it is a browser that can be used on Macs or PCs (even Linux) and has a great dropdown search function for quick lookups on certain sites.
Wowhead has one as does
WoWwiki and so do we here at
WoW Insider (link goes to add-on). You can go to the
Firefox Search Engine page to install any of these add-ons onto your version of Firefox.
Drysc says to check in at the Armory over the next couple of days for the announcement that the search engine has been completed.
Posted Aug 29th 2007 2:28PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: News items, Expansions, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King
In
a silly thread in the Druid forums asking whether the druids would get a "dark form" to go along with the Death Knight being a dark version of the Paladin (which it...sort of is, I guess), US CM Nethaera dropped
a few interesting pieces of DK information.
[when asked if DKs will start at level 55, instead of 60 or 70]
That is the current thinking. It could still be subject to change though and is not concrete. We're still toying with ideas of how we want to make it all work. We want people to feel like they are learning not only the how's of becoming a Death Knight from the lore perspective, but also how to play one.[More character slots?]
Undetermined as of yet. We'll let people know when we know more.[...the current feeling is that a player with any class over 55 (or whatever the level ends up being) will be able to unlock Death Knight? ]
yes. That is our current thinking.
[asked about balance]
It is going to be balanced against other classes and will not be able to stomp everyone else just because it's a Death Knight. Yes, they will be powerful but in their own unique way. What makes it a Hero class is that it is from Warcraft lore as a Hero class and also you will get access to it at a higher level. Any race can be a Death Knight in our current thinking as well since the path to corruption can be founded with good intentions much like what happened to Arthas.
[How many abilities will DKs start with?]
Undetermined as of yet. We're still fleshing a lot of things out. This is another reason we caution people about the perception that the expansion is coming out 'too soon'. We have only shown people the tip of the iceberg and have a lot more that we are still working out and planning for. Once we have more details, we'll be sharing them so people can discuss it more and plan for the future.So there's a lot of "not sure yet" in that post, but there's also some good information, notably that they currently think DKs will start at level 55. That's a bit lower than I would have expected. 58 or 60 would make more sense, in my opinion, in order to be able to start out in Outland (but then again, does that make sense lore-wise?). So how excited are you about
Death Knights? Are they your main reason to buy
Wrath? The change that will kill
WoW?
[thanks, Natulcien]
Posted Aug 22nd 2007 6:51PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Priest, Odds and ends, News items, Wrath of the Lich King
Apparently, Fear Ward is going to be a spell for all priests as of
Wrath of the Lich King. This is indirectly confirmed by Nethaera. In response to a post translated from German that implies a universal Fear Ward,
the candle said:
This is true that we plan to spread Fear Ward around, but don't expect it until most likely the expansion. There's a bit of a difference between "spread it around" and "for all races," but still, I'm betting on every race getting it just to end the debate. And it looks like the
URL change is not the only refreshing the
Armory is getting today; the "first phase" (ooh, there's more?) of Armory optimizations
has gone live:
- Smarter, faster results pages: The Armory's various search results pages respond more quickly when changing pages or sorting within the results. The Armory's right hand panel also takes advantage of this new speed and now remembers what page you were last viewing as well.
- Faster item tooltips: The tooltips that appear when mousing over items in a character profile or an item search results page are now much more responsive.
- Open Armory links in new windows/tabs: Now you can open links from the Armory in their own tabs or windows for quick comparisons between profiles, items, search results, and more.
- New advanced item search button: This button takes you to the Armory's powerful advanced item search options and is located in a prominent, convenient location under the main search field.
- And much more: Many more specific improvements have been implemented, the details of which can be found on the Updates page. In addition, general performance has been greatly improved in the areas of response time, loading time, and memory usage.
Neat. The Armory is an indispensible tool, and making it faster is a big plus. The item tooltips still don't work in
Camino, my browser of choice, but I'm told that's a Camino bug and not really Blizz's fault.
Posted Aug 16th 2007 9:19PM by Eliah Hecht
Filed under: Odds and ends, News items
As we had all hoped, players with characters on the realms that received the
48-hour maintenance earlier this week will have a two-day playtime credit
applied to their accounts:
To compensate players for any inconvenience caused by the downtime experienced as a result of this week's 48 hour extended maintenance, we will be issuing a 48-hour time extension to all players who have accounts that are currently active on the following realms.
Aggramar, Argent Dawn, Arthas, Azgalor, Bleeding Hollow, Bloodhoof, Burning Blade, Burning Legion, Durotan, Earthen Ring, Elune, Eonar, Eredar, Gilneas, Gorefiend, Kargath, Laughing Skull, Lihgning's Blade, Llane, Lothar, Madoran, Magtheridon, Malygos, Mannoroth, Medivh, Shadowmoon, Shattered Hand, Skullcrusher, Stormrage, Thunderhorn, Thunderlord, Trollbane, Warsong, Zul'jinAlways good to see Blizzard doing the right thing. In other news, a few items are going to become BoP in
patch 2.2; existing instances of them will be soulbound to whoever has them when the patch hits.
From Eyonix:
In the next major content patch the following items will be flagged as Bind on Pick-up (BoP). They are currently not bound at all. If you possess one of these items, be sure it's on the character of your preference.
- Felbane Slugs
- Recipe: Elixir of Major Agility
- Formula: Enchant Bracer - Superior Healing
- Hellfire Shot
So make sure you transfer those to whoever you want to have them as soon as possible. The background downloader being active, it's possible the patch could hit as early as next Tuesday (though I doubt it).
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