Filed under: Wrath of the Lich King

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Going back a few weeks, I wrote Ol' Grumpy's guide to Cataclysm instance protocol. Since it was a general post, it didn't focus specifically on warriors, which made it strange and weird and got my hands all itchy. Trying to think about things from the perspective of a ranged DPS or a healer just makes my head hurt. (To be fair, if you've seen the average warrior's int score, you understand my difficulty.)

So now I'm going to try and provide a more warrior-centric view of the new Cataclysm instances and how we're going to have to change and cope. I'm also going to try and provide some advice for people who are just coming back to World of Warcraft after a break. I'm going to assume you at least have a passing familiarity with the class from The Burning Crusade days, if nothing else. (This column would be very, very long if I tried to sum up everything from classic to today.)

So if you're just coming back to the game and your warrior, what's changed? Quite a lot.

When one considers how dungeons and heroic dungeons will work in Cataclysm, one of the first elements to consider is the way that dungeons have functioned since World of Warcraft's release. I find it illuminating to consider that one of the most complained-about aspects of dungeon running in Wrath of the Lich King seems to my eyes to be a consequence of a successful series of design changes.

We've all heard the complaints about groups treating the dungeons and heroics of the Wrath era as chores, five- to 15-minute frenzied runs through the place, annihilating everything in the path of five silent, grim harbingers of death. No nuance, no subtlety, and no strategy. Crowd control? Crowds are controlled by their own grim, horrible demises. When considered in this light, these dungeons seem less like adventures and more like unfortunate victims of beings who invade and despoil.

However, the reason for this is fairly simple. In Wrath, dungeons have been wildly successful at two very difficult tasks.

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

The King of Stormwind, ruler of the last remaining human kingdom of the original ones founded by the Arathi people. He became king as a child, his father killed right before his eyes by a trusted advisor who betrayed him. Before long, he saw his nation in ruins as he was forced to flee, taken to safety by Anduin Lothar, possibly the greatest warrior humanity had ever produced.

His childhood was spent in a foreign court, raised alongside the children of King Terenas Menethil of Lordaeron, and it wasn't until after the orcs and their Horde were defeated and Stormwind was finally rebuilt that he could return home. The cost was losing Lothar, his second father. His closest friend as he grew up became a monster. His wife died in a riot over the cost of rebuilding his city, a riot manipulated by someone he believed a close ally. He was kidnapped, tortured with magic, and torn into two people who lived two different lives, then forcibly rejoined.

Since the death of King Llane Wrynn, he has not known many moments of peace -- and it seems unlikely that the future intends to allow him any for quite some time to come. Who, then, is the King of Stormwind, Varian Wrynn, and what is likely to be his response to the challenges that are coming?

From time to time, we find an interesting forum discussion that manages to elucidate how the past informs the present and future -- specifically, how the design of Wrath of the Lich King has inspired Cataclysm's systems. Poster Klissa asks an interesting question about four specs known to be the bottom-of-the-barrel DPS specs during most of this expansion: the arms warrior, frost mage, subtlety rogue and beast mastery hunter. Klissa asks why, since Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) has posted on the forums that Blizzard has known for a while that these four specs just weren't cutting it, that they weren't buffed to be made competitive.

As we've come to expect him to, Ghostcrawler responds with a fairly in-depth answer. He covers the difficulty of balancing two or more specs in a class that fulfill the same role and how this experience in Wrath of the Lich King helped guide Blizzard in its systems overhaul for Cataclysm.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Yes, your DPS is too low. Be you arms or fury, yes, absolutely, it is too low. It is not my purpose to dispute this with you or argue with you about it. (I will point out it has already been addressed and you may already see an increase.) Frankly, I fear I have not been contentious enough the past few months. It was hard for me, looking at ICC DPS parses, seeing the highest fury DPS and even seeing my own in those times when I would go off-spec, to worry about fury DPS in 4.0.1. While arms has been low in PvE for quite some time, it was difficult for me to believe that patch 4.0.1 would launch and lower fury DPS so dramatically. I knew that it would lower it. Rage normalization, the loss of the Heroic Strike bug that allowed warriors to get away with so little hit, and the rooting out of armor pen was fated to topple us from our throne and humble us -- there is no disputing this. It was intentional. I could easily have imagined a drop as severe as 80 percent of what warriors were doing in Icecrown in patch 3.3.3 and not have been surprised.

Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Thursday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail!

Patch 4.0.1 has come and gone, and we can now use the benefit of hindsight to see how well our predictions did. I'm going to start off with the elephants in the room: alchemy transmutes and addons.

I reported that the cooldown for epic gems had been removed in the PTR and that this was likely so that people wouldn't be put into the poorhouse by having to regem. In reality, the datamining that determined this was incorrect, and the cooldowns are now resetting at midnight instead of the old way. There's huge demand for epic and rare cut and raw gems now, and people are tending to go toward rares because the epics are just too expensive.

No, it's not just you. The pre-Cataclysm patch 4.0.1 has indeed already begun turning the world upside down. Some caster DPS is far, far higher than it was a week ago, while melee DPS (especially DPSers who made heavy use of armor penetration) have seen significant shortfalls. Tanks are reporting threat issues across the board, as Wrath heroics that they tanked with ludicrous ease a week ago are suddenly providing them with much more difficulty, especially on groups of mobs. It's the pre-expansion shift, and it's wreaking havoc with players who've grown accustomed to how their classes or specs have played since November 2008.

You're not alone. To try and put things into a nutshell:

• With elements of play like the new spirit-to-hit conversion and new talents and abilities, some casters are reporting greatly inflated DPS.
• Meanwhile, with the loss of stats like armor penetration and tinkering with buffs like Windfury, melee DPS of all stripes are reporting DPS losses. Some classes are reporting as much as a 50 to 60 percent drop. Some of this is probably due to suboptimal gem or gearing options. ArP's switching to crit like it did basically loaded up a lot of people with far more crit than they needed, as one example.
• Healing is in a weird place. Resto druids miss their forms, and across the board, heals are reported to be slightly less efficient -- but since no one's leveling past 80 yet, rating decay isn't crippling anyone.
• Tanks are reporting significant issues in trying to tank the current content with the new systems. AoE threat is greatly reduced for just about everyone, and learning new mechanics is causing some difficulty. For instance, if you spam Heroic Strike as a warrior tank now, you're doing it wrong. Armor has decreased in many cases, the loss of defense has cost tanks who relied on that stat some pure avoidance, and in general, the greatly inflated DPS of some casters has made keeping threat off of them extremely brutal.

Things are going to be up in the air for the next couple of months, more than likely. If your class got some of the ludicrous buffs, congrats on god mode until Cataclysm. If you instead suffered for the changes, my condolences; I do know how you feel. I really, really do. Whether we'll see adjustments before Cataclysm itself or not is unknown, but unlikely, as the focus right now is most likely on making sure the expansion ships in a more balanced way.

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This is it! Patch 4.0.1 begins the slide into December's upcoming expansion. It's a whole new game from here on out. Get oriented with our roundup of everything there is to know about patch 4.0.1 and how it changes the game until the launch of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

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Insider Trader is a column about professions, written by Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, who also writes Gold Capped. This week, we're talking about some of the things that will shape the lives of professionals and trade skill addicts as they await patch 4.0.1.

I've briefly touched on this before, but 4.0.1 is likely to drop on Tuesday, and it's bringing a bunch of changes that will have an effect on your trade skills. While there's been a general drop in demand and prices for the last few months as people generally spend less time playing, this patch promises to change that for a few professions.

The first change we should talk about is that glyphs are going to be completely reworked. Any glyphs people use after this patch will be learned permanently, and the glyphs they have in either spec at launch will be already known. This means that for the first few weeks after the patch, players will be buying most of the glyphs they think they might ever need, but only once per character. The last time something like this happened was the introduction of dual specs in patch 3.1 -- there was so much demand that the scribes selling glyphs couldn't keep them in supply.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, old gods, and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Last year, we talked about Cataclysm. Since then, we've learned an awful lot about how it's going to affect warriors, starting as soon as patch 4.0.1 drops and changing a whole host of systems we've grown accustomed to. We've learned that the release date is my birthday. I'm pretty sure it's just a coincidence, but I'm still going to ride that coincidence for all it is worth.

What's interesting to me as we look at the coming expansion with another year's perspective is how much of what we heard about is going to be delivered. Yes, defense is gone, armor penetration is gone, reforging is coming, mastery is in. Rage normalization, a rebalancing of tanking to move away from AoE threat's being the expected norm, the transformation of on-next-swing abilities to become instant attacks. Three new warrior races, with the two expansion races and blood elves finally being able to be warriors. It was a heck of a laundry list and amazingly, Blizzard actually seems to be on track to deliver almost all of it.

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

If you're a troll, you owe your current faction to them.

If you've leveled in Elwynn Forest, or on Bloodmyst Isle, or the Ghostlands, or the coast of Darkshore, or even in Durotar, you've heard their battle cry. If you've adventured in Northrend, you've learned that they can indeed speak and display intelligence, and in the upcoming Cataclysm, you'll discover that they suffer from the depredations of their ancient neighbors, the naga. Whether you've seen them in Serpentshrine Cavern, fought to free them on the Isle of Quel'Danas or tried to wipe them out in Blackfathom Depths, one thing is for certain.

They are murloc.

Murlocs may indeed be one of the oldest native races on Azeroth. It's clear that they are not one of the "seed races" created by the Titans or descended from said Titanic creations. No curse of flesh seems to be inherent in their origins. Like trolls and tauren, there is no known explanation for the existence of these aquatic folk. They simply are. Interestingly, murlocs are susceptible to the plague of undeath, but at least in one location, said murlocs retained their free will much as the Forsaken do.

Beyond this part be spoilers for Cataclysm. For indeed, these piscean folk have many secrets to share and much wisdom to impart.

World of Warcraft Lore - The Murlocs

Several indicators from the murlocs themselves point to the possibility that the fish-men are but worshippers or underlings of perhaps several deep-sea monstrosities that currently lie sleeping, or at least waiting, in the murky fathoms – and even more disturbing, that the murlocs' emergence is an indication of their incipient awakening.

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Reader Jab tipped us off to pictures of DC Unlimited's series 8 of the World of Warcraft action figures, featuring:

• Gnome rogue Brink Spannercrank vs. Kobold Miner Snaggle
• The Black Knight
• Forsaken priestess Confessor Dhalia

All of the figures so far look really cool, and it's nice to see Blizzard having DC add in these quirky characters. The release date for the series 8 figures is slated for May 11, 2011. Check out the first-look pictures here. Series 6 is really cool, and these new figures don't seem like they're going to disappoint. Still ahead are the upcoming Series 7 figures, including human paladin Judge Malthred, orc rogue Garona and worgen spy Garm Whitefang.

Check out all of the DC Unlimited WoW action figures at the DC website. On the site, each series lists places where you can order or pick up figures, including plenty of brick-and-mortar stores for you old-school shoppers.

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

It's a truth we all must face: Wrath of the Lich King is coming to a close. Whether you loved it, hated it or something in between, it is time to look forward to the new expansion. With the excitement of a whole new cataclysmic event on the horizon, one can't help but look back on the recent past. There were some glorious moments in Wrath: the Wrathgate quest line leading up to the Battle for the Undercity, epic battles in Wintergrasp, and equally epic encounters like Algalon in Ulduar and the Lich King in Icecrown Citadel all come to mind.

Yet with greatness come some faults. Wrath was no exception. About three months after the expansion's release with the start of the holiday Love is in the Air, a bug caused the message The Ice Stone has melted! to be spammed in everyone's chat logs. And let us not forget the fiasco that was Additional instances cannot be launched, please try again later that prevented thousands of players from entering dungeons until servers were upgraded with new hardware months after it started popping up.

There was a lot of fun to be had in Wrath of the Lich King. There was a lot to feel nostalgic about. However, Wrath was far from perfect. What won't you miss about this expansion?

Spoilers for Cataclysm in this post, me hearties.

One of the things I've noticed in my time back-and-forthing between Alliance and Horde toons is that each faction seems to have many, many vocal partisans who believe the opposite faction to be filled to the brim with churls, knaves and scalawags. Perhaps even hooligans and ne'er-do-wells. You see it all the time in general chat: "Those ally fellows are nothing but mountebanks!" Or perhaps: "Horde? Nothing but disreputable scoundrels, bounders and cads!"

What I find interesting is how much of this factional divide is created by the game itself ... how much comes from quest lines and zone design and world events ... and how much is purely based on the players. It's true that over the past several expansions, we've seen a shift in the game itself from the days of the AQ gate event and the opening of the Dark Portal, when Horde and Alliance stood shoulder-to-shoulder against threats to Azeroth, to the present Wrath/Cataclysm direction when even Old Gods, Lich Kings and insane dragon aspects can't get the Horde and Alliance to cooperate.

Still, until fairly recently, I'd never really felt much of the infamous Horde/Alliance hatred from the game itself. Even the Wrathgate /Battle for Undercity and the Broken Front quests didn't come close to matching the intensity of a forum flame war or a really acrimonious Wintergrasp battle. Playing Horde back in the day, you couldn't help but notice the perception of superiority Horde players (including myself, at the time) felt over Alliance. But the story didn't really have much to do with it.

Insider Trader is a column about professions, written by Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, who also writes Gold Capped. If you're looking for general auction house advice, you'll find it in Gold Capped; Insider Trader focuses on specific profitable markets.

Got this from Thoorull on Steamwheedle Cartel (EU-H):

Blizzard has a long tradition of taking some "special" mats or crafts off of cooldown eventually, to help players along as content progresses. There are many cases: The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King cloth, Transmute: Titanium, Smelt: Titansteel, etc. What I completely fail to understand is why some now-trivial transmutes are still on a cooldown. Not just plain cooldown, but the all-important one which is used also for current epic gems. This includes vanilla iron, truesilver and essences, and TBC primals in addition to the said current-content epic gems and eternals. It completely baffles me why I can transmute a bajillion of titanium bars or current-content meta gems (as long as I have the mats) but not some old and obscure stuff.

This is an excellent observation that's been bugging me for a while. Cataclysm is just around the corner, and everyone will be leveling new characters and doing trade skills from the ground up. It sure would be awesome to have the ability to turn readily available mithril and iron into much harder-to-find truesilver and gold. Let's look into what trade skill cooldowns really do.

Players who're able to log on after maintenance is over today will discover that the Operation Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall world events are now available! These are two of the introductory Cataclysm world events. Head to Kharanos in Dun Morogh or the Echo Isles in Durotar to take advantage of these limited-time experiences.

To start the Echo Isles quests, you want to talk to Vanira, who is right next to Voljin in the Sen'jin village in Durotar.
To start the Operation Gnomeregan quests, you want to talk to High Tinker Mekkatorque, who is located in the Tinker Town district of Ironforge.

These quests are counting towards the Loremaster achievement.

More information on the event:

• Official Gnomeregan and Echo Isles announcement and information
• Operation Echo Isles / Zalazane's Fall: Transcripts and details
• Operation Gnomeregan: Transcripts and details
• Echo Isles / Zalazane's Fall quest summary and gallery
• PrintWarcraft.com offers original WoW posters