The goal of this team is to do absolutely insane AOE damage in instance pulls while staying relatively unscathed.  Individually, a Priest using Holy Nova to DPS in an instanced would typically be laughed at while the other players click confirmation on the group kick option.  However, when four Priests are multiboxed together with a Protection Paladin, the end result is nothing less than amazing.

Below is a video of the carnaged wrecked in the first Burning Crusade instance:  Ramparts

Here is the general strategy and a 35 minute video:

• Firstly, I am using the Pwnboxer multiboxing software heavily in the area of Dockable Clickmapping, which are the buttons located on the actual game screen.  The Dockable Clickmapping is basically a virtual programmable keyboard and is an absolute godsend to multiboxing.
• Before each pull I will Power Word: Shield my Paladin, and with 1 button stack up 4 Renews.
• I then will aggro as many mobs as possible, often 15-20 elites of the same level.  While aggroing I will press my Pain Suppression button, which I can cast 4 times due to round-robin macros, which cause the Paladin to take 40% less damage.
• Once I have a gigantic array of mobs together, I simply roll my face over the num9 key.
• The Numpad Nine Key:   This button is broadcasted in the Pwnboxer dual-box software across all 5 guys.  On my 4x Priests, this will spam Holy Nova over and over again, healing the entire party for a massive amount of health, while doing a combined insane damage to all mobs, often in excess of 8k DPS.   On my 1x Prot Pally, the 9 button is for a castsequence macro to do the following:  Consecration, Hammer of Righteousness, Holy Shield, and Avenger’s Shield.

This takes place on the Blackrock-US server, in the guild <BUT MOM IM MULTIBOXING>.

The most obvious question these changes raise is “Why are stats being changed, and why now?” As the game has matured, we’ve run into increasingly complex issues with the current stat system. Many stats are inherently confusing, and the way they interrelate can feel convoluted. Attack Power, for example, currently translates to damage, but so does Armor Penetration. Defense provides five different statistical benefits of varying utility. Mana regeneration involves understanding multiple stats and rules and often ends up being irrelevant anyway. In addition, the difference between a “good stat” for a class and a “bad stat” can be extreme. Some casters want Haste but not Crit; hunters want Armor Penetration but not Haste. There are other overarching issues, as well, such as Intellect not being very exciting for casters despite it being a core stat — and these are just a few examples.

Our ultimate goal is make gear a more interesting (and less confusing) choice by making each stat valuable to more players. While the reasoning behind some of the following changes may be clear, we understand that you may have questions about some of the less obvious alterations, and we’ll do our best to answer any questions you may have here on the forums.

What You’ll See on Gear

Stamina - Because of the way we will be assigning Strength, Agility, and Intellect, non-plate wearers will end up with more Stamina than before. Health pools will be much closer between plate-wearers and other classes.

Spirit - Come Cataclysm, this stat should only be found on healing gear. Non-healing casters will have other systems in place to regenerate mana, and we are designing special solutions for Elemental shaman and Balance druids who often share gear with healers (more on this below). Raid buffs that currently boost Spirit (such as Blessing of Kings) will only boost the primary stats of Stamina, Strength, Agility, and Intellect. We are also likely changing the five-second rule and other quirks of the current regen system.

Intellect - Intellect will now grant Spell Power (more on this below). Intellect will also provide less mana than it currently does.

Haste - Haste will become more attractive for melee classes by allowing them to recover resources such as energy and runes more quickly. Our intention is for Haste to let you “do stuff” more often.

Block Rating – Block is being redesigned to scale better. Blocked attacks will simply hit for 30% less damage. Block rating will improve your chance to block, though overall block chances will be lower than they are today.

Parry - Parry no longer provides 100% avoidance and no longer speeds up attacks. Instead, when you parry an attack, it and the next attack will each hit for 50% damage (assuming they hit at all). In other words, Dodge is a chance to avoid 100% of the damage from one attack, Parry is a chance to avoid 50% of the damage from two attacks, and Block is a chance to avoid 30% of the damage from one attack.

Mastery - This is a new stat that will allow players to become better at whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. It’s directly tied to talents, so what you gain from improving this stat is entirely dependent upon your class and the talent specialization you choose. We’ll talk more about specific Mastery benefits in the future.

Armor - The way Armor mitigates damage is not changing, but the Armor stat has been rebalanced to mirror changes to the armor curve in Cataclysm. As a result, bonus Armor will go down slightly overall. We are also changing the mitigation difference among armor types so that plate doesn’t offer so much more protection than mail, leather, and cloth.

Resilience - This will only affect damage done by players and critical damage done by players. It will not impact crit chance, mana drains, or other such effects.

Strength, Agility, Hit Rating, Expertise, and Critical Strike Rating – These will all still appear on gear as well. Aside from situations mentioned elsewhere in this list, in general these will function similarly to how they do now, though the details — such as how much Hit Rating you might need to effectively combat high-level creatures (more on this below) — are likely to change.

Being Removed from Items

Attack Power – This stat will no longer be present on most items as a flat value, though it will still show up on some process. Strength and Agility, which will be present on items, will grant the appropriate amount of Attack Power (generally 2 Attack Power per point of Strength or Agility) depending upon which stat a particular class favors. Agility may provide less Crit than it currently does.

Spell Power – Spell Power is another stat that you’ll no longer see present on most items. Instead, as mentioned above, Intellect will grant Spell Power. One exception is that caster weapons will still have Spell Power. This allows us to make weapons proportionately more powerful for casters in the same way they are for melee classes.

Armor Penetration – This stat will no longer be present on items. Armor Penetration will still exist in talents and abilities.

Shield Block Value – This stat will no longer be present on items, since the amount blocked is always proportional to the amount of damage done. Talents and other effects might still modify the damage-reduction percentage from 30%, however.

Going Away Completely

MP5 – This stat will be removed from the game completely. Holy paladins and Restoration shaman will be redesigned to benefit from Spirit.

Defense - Defense is being removed from the game entirely. Tanking classes should expect to become uncrittable versus creatures just by shifting into Defensive Stance, Frost Presence, Bear Form, or by using Righteous Fury.

Spell Ranks – Spell ranks will cease to exist. All spells will have one rank and will scale appropriately with level. The levels at which you can learn certain spells are being changed in order to fill in some of the gaps, and we will be introducing some new spells to learn along the way as well.

Weapon Skill – This stat will be removed from the game completely. Classes will start with all the weapon skills they need to know and will not need to improve them.

What Else You Should Know

Combat ratings – All ratings will be much harder to “cap out” at maximum gear levels. Ratings will be steeper in Cataclysm, and creatures in later tiers of content will be harder to hit or crit, similar to how level-83 mobs are harder to hit or crit than level-80 mobs.

Reforging - While these changes will go a long way to making a wider variety of stats more attractive, we understand that sometimes you simply don’t want more Hit Rating on your gear or you’d rather have more Haste than more Crit. In Cataclysm, we are going to give players a way to replace stats on gear as part of the existing profession system. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll be able to convert one stat to 50% of another stat. While some conversions (like converting Stamina to Strength) won’t be permitted, the goal is to let you customize your gear more.

Gems - We are changing the gem colors of a few stats as a result of these adjustments. For example, Hit is likely to be blue instead of yellow. We’ll have more details on this in the future.

Changes to Existing Gear

As with previous expansions, we plan to roll out these changes and modify all existing gear shortly before Cataclysm launches, though it’s still too early to say exactly when. For the most part, the gear you have will still be good for you, though there will be exceptions, such as warriors using leather and mail armor.

If you are a tank (druids excepted), expect to see:

* No more Defense on gear. Existing Defense becomes Dodge, Parry, or Block Rating.
* No more Block Value on gear. Existing Block Value becomes Block Rating.
* You’ll have as much Stamina as you’re used to, though you may notice your tanking plate has a bit less Stamina than a comparable piece of DPS plate, since we tend to take the gem budget out of your most attractive stat.
* Bonus Armor on gear will go down slightly.

If you are a melee DPS class, druid tank, or hunter, expect to see:

* A lot more Stamina. Bear-form Stamina scaling will be lowered as a result.
* Strength if you wear plate. Agility if you wear mail or leather.
* Existing Attack Power becomes Agility and Stamina.Armor Penetration becomes Haste or Crit.
* No Intellect on melee gear. Hunters won’t need Intellect since they will no longer use mana. Shaman and Retribution paladins will get mana and spell damage in other ways.

If you are a DPS caster, expect to see:

* A lot more Stamina.
* All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
* No Spirit. You won’t miss Spirit, though, because you won’t need it for DPS or mana regen.

If you are a healer, expect to see:

* A lot more Stamina.
* All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
* Spirit instead of MP5. You’ll probably be happy with Spirit, though, because mana regen is going to matter more than it does currently. Healing paladins and shaman will benefit more from Spirit than they do currently.

If you are a Balance druid or Elemental shaman:

* You will still share gear with Restoration druids and shaman.
* Your gear will have Spirit on it. It won’t have Hit on it.
* You will have a talent that converts Spirit to Hit. We will adjust talents accordingly so that you want about as much Spirit as, say, a warlock wants Hit.
* Hit on rings and other such gear will still benefit you.
* Raid buffs will no longer boost Spirit, so you shouldn’t find yourself unexpectedly over the Hit cap because of buffs.

Many lower-level items with nonsensical combinations of stats, such as Agility and Spirit, will be changed. We’re also updating quest rewards, trade skills, and loot drops to support better itemization for class builds that weren’t widely available or used prior to The Burning Crusade (such as Balance druids).

We’re aware this is a lot of information to take in, but this is still only a piece of the larger picture, and many of these changes rely on integration with other systems we haven’t yet discussed in detail. In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll continue to tell you more about these changes, along with all of the new and exciting features we have planned for Cataclysm.

Introduction
While we can take a single toon and fly about gathering mineral or herbs, the same as any other one-boxer… and possibly even have a few toons doing the same at one time, switching between them. This is not really that much more efficient a means to make gold then we could do as single boxers.

Dailies are a decent method to compound our extra characters into more gold then a one-boxer makes, from doing the same thing as one character. It requires a route which is based off of either kills or drops where each toon can loot from every corpse. My current route takes 45 minutes on the first team and an hour on the other two teams, and makes 1100g in the process. But dailies are repetitive and boring, even if they are consistent. It is getting rather hard to make myself run the route each day.

Something better…
I’ve read a few threads on making gold as a boxer. Dailies seemed to be the answer, but they are becoming a chore to do.

Transmutes on the other hand…

Your toon needs to be level 65, in order to advance to a 450 Alchemy skill. In addition, you would like to be 68th for the specialization; in our case Transmutation specialization (which requires 4x Primal Might – BC era, 1x Primal Fire/Water/Air/Earth/Mana).

Transmutation Specialization is a chance for 1-4 extra items to be made, for the same material cost. While it does not proc often, it will easily pay the cost of the 4x Primal Might after a couple of procs.

I currently have 22 toons who are 70th or above, and who have an open profession slot or a profession I don’t mind dumping. I’m really considering the Druids and Warlocks/Priest (pvp teams) as well, not sure that I want to level Engineering on them or not; 10 more Alchemists is decent coin. 20 to 30 toons, able to do transmutes.

There are currently six epic gem transmutes in the game. Five of them are vendor trained, while the sixth is the quest reward for having done five or more epic gem transmutes.

Chances are good, gems are here to stay. In Cataclysm, the skill level will likely be 75 higher then it is now, the gems will have a new name and better stats, but the system will be the same — which means the profit potential of the method will remain.

Checking the auction house for historical and current data, specifically the pre-transmute costs for the materials; on my server, they are:

- Ametrine (1x Eternal Shadow, 1x Monarch Topaz)….. 20 Gold
- Cardinal Ruby (1x Eternal Fire, 1x Scarlet Ruby)…….. 80 Gold
- Dreadstone (1x Eternal Shadow, 1x Twilight Opal)….. 25 Gold
- Eye of Zul (3x Forest Emerald)………………………….. 20 Gold
- King’s Amber (1x Eternal Life, 1x Autumn’s Glow)…… 35 Gold
- Majestic Zircon (1x Eternal Air, 1x Sky Sapphire)……. 30 Gold

And then checking the value of the post-transmute (and cut) gems:

- Ametrine cuts, 165-210 Gold………………….. Up to +190 Gold
- Cardinal Ruby cuts, 170-200 Gold……………. Up to +120 Gold
- Dreadstone cuts, 150-250 Gold……………….. Up to +225 Gold
- Eye of Zul cuts, 160-210 Gold…………………. Up to +180 Gold
- King’s Amber cuts, 130-190 Gold……………… Up to +155 Gold
- Majestic Zircon cuts, 130-190 Gold…………… Up to +160 Gold

Obviously, if you don’t have a Jewelcrafter capable of epic cuts, your profits will be less. However, the Jewelcraft daily is extremely easy to do — combine two gems (prospect ore or purchase on the AH), with a drop off of a low-mid 70th mob, for a couple of gold profit if you bought the gems on the AH. You also receive one jewelcraft token, and epic cuts cost 4 tokens each.

Some Math

Transmutes are on 20 hour cooldowns, which essentially means we get one transmute per day, for each character who is a 450 Alchemist.

When starting out, we will naturally make the most profitable gem transmute, based on the cost of the materials versus the sell price of the transmuted and cut gem. However, we will not want to flood the market as we would like our cut gems to actually sell.

Ideally, our Jewelcrafter will have several cuts. I have 8 so far, which means with 22 Alchemists, I would have approximately 3 of each gem for sale each day. With 32 Alchemists, I would have 4 of each gem up at once.

The more cuts we have, the more flexibility we have. If I had an epic cut for each epic gem I were to produce, this would be the ideal. I could post my one gem of each type, with an excellent chance it would sell. With a single cut and 20 gems placed, it is very unlikely all will sell within 20 hours and I again flood the market with 20 more of that gem. Our Jewelcrafter(s) are an important portion of the system.

The math… assuming an average of 150 gold profit on a transmute/cut.
- 01 Alchemists = 0,150 Gold
- 05 Alchemists = 0,750 Gold
- 10 Alchemists = 1,500 Gold
- 20 Alchemists = 3,000 Gold
- 30 Alchemists = 4,500 Gold

Even running 30 Alchemists… It will be a relatively quick process to log six sets of toons into the game (5 toons per set), press a keybind which has the crafting macro on it, and then have my JC toon cut each gem, and have the auction toon list them. A quarter of the time of running dailies on the most geared team, and the profit of dailies on four teams.

The Plan

I detest farming, but at some points it will be necessary. There is an abundance of Northrend herbs on the auction house. There are generally enough Outland herbs, but this bracket can cost a fair bit. Classic warcraft era herbs are not always available in large enough quantities, which means farming will be required at times.

1) Run at least four teams through the daily route, over the course of two days. If you only have one team at 80th, adjust your plan to an alchemist every four days, instead of every two days. In my case, my route is 1,100g in 45 minutes on the main team, or an hour on the other two teams. The reason for 4 daily runs, is purely gold; AH purchasing everything has ranged from 2,700 to 3,800 gold.

2) Over the course of these two days, AH purchase as many herbs as possible of the types used for the alchemy guide you are following. There are numerous alchemy guides for free. A google search found this for me: WoW Alchemy Guide 1-450. It is not necessarily the best guide, but it works. It has general guidelines, such as 55x Sungrass, or whatever. I will over purchase as often as possible (at least until the last few toons), as the next Alchemist can use surplus herbs.

3) Level up an Alchemist every other day, using the herbs purchased. In the event of not enough herbs, have my herbalist toon do a little farming. I actually have a herbalist (and skinner/miner/enchanter) per team, so can have herbalists in three places at once. This is not the preferable option, but I’d rather farm a little then be at the mercy of hoping someone will list something.

4) Repeat the above process… hopefully cranking out an Alchemist every two days.

5) Run the Jewelcraft Daily, every day to expand my repetoire of cuts. The ideal, is one cut per Alchemist.

Some Macros

This one is over 255 characters, if you leave it intact you’ll need an addon which allows for longer macros… something like IS Boxer, Macaroon or Supermacros.

Alternatively, you could break it into smaller macros, and give a piece to each toon. If you are transmuting five different gem types across a five man team, each toon could have their own macro.

It will do whichever transmute you have materials for.

/cast Alchemy
/run for i=1,GetNumTradeSkills() do if GetTradeSkillInfo(i)==”Transmute: Majestic Zircon” then DoTradeSkill(i) end if GetTradeSkillInfo(i)==”Transmute: Eye of Zul” then DoTradeSkill(i) end if GetTradeSkillInfo(i)==”Transmute: Ametrine” then DoTradeSkill(i) end if GetTradeSkillInfo(i)==”Transmute: Dreadstone” then DoTradeSkill(i) end if GetTradeSkillInfo(i)==”Transmute: Cardinal Ruby” then DoTradeSkill(i) end if GetTradeSkillInfo(i)==”Transmute: King’s Amber” then DoTradeSkill(i) break end CloseTradeSkill() end

You could break it into:
(Have not tested the smaller macros)

/cast Alchemy
/run for i=1,GetNumTradeSkills() do if GetTradeSkillInfo(i)==”Transmute: Ametrine” then DoTradeSkill(i) break end CloseTradeSkill() end

/cast Alchemy
/run for i=1,GetNumTradeSkills() do if GetTradeSkillInfo(i)==”Transmute: Cardinal Ruby” then DoTradeSkill(i) break end CloseTradeSkill() end

/cast Alchemy
/run for i=1,GetNumTradeSkills() do if GetTradeSkillInfo(i)==”Transmute: Dreadstone” then DoTradeSkill(i) break end CloseTradeSkill() end

/cast Alchemy
/run for i=1,GetNumTradeSkills() do if GetTradeSkillInfo(i)==”Transmute: Eye of Zul” then DoTradeSkill(i) break end CloseTradeSkill() end

/cast Alchemy
/run for i=1,GetNumTradeSkills() do if GetTradeSkillInfo(i)==”Transmute: King’s Amber” then DoTradeSkill(i) break end CloseTradeSkill() end

/cast Alchemy
/run for i=1,GetNumTradeSkills() do if GetTradeSkillInfo(i)==”Transmute: Majestic Zircon” then DoTradeSkill(i) break end CloseTradeSkill() end

And one more macro. This one will find the transmuted gem in your inventory, then open a trade window to the desired toon.

/run for i=0,4 do for x=1,GetContainerNumSlots(i) do y=GetContainerItemLink(i,x) if y then if GetItemInfo(y)==”Ametrine” then PickupContainerItem(i,x); DropItemOnUnit(”ahtoon”); return; end end end end

Just substitute the gem type and change the DropItemOnUnit to point towards either your AH recipient, your Jewelcrafter, or the toon who will be mailing to the desired character (only one toon will be on the same account, for instant mailing).

Addendum

The alchemy guide I linked, has needed “x” amount of each herb. While there are other paths out there, they will end up being similar.

Having followed this guide for two toons so far, this is what I’ve needed. The link for each herb, is to the thottbot resource map for the zone with the best spawn rate.

Next run through, I’ll take note of which herbs are orange recipes (Fixed number of herbs) and which are yellow/green (Estimated number of herbs).

060 x Peacebloom……… Elwynn Forest or The Barrens
060 x Silverleaf………… Elwynn Forest or The Barrens
030 x Briarthorn……….. Darkshore or The Barrens
015 x Mageroyal……….. Darkshore or The Barrens
040 x Stranglekelp…….. Wetlands or The Barrens
030 x Liferoot………….. Swamp of Sorrows
030 x Kingsblood……… Stranglethorn Vale
045 x Goldthorn……….. Stranglethorn Vale
005 x Wild Steelbloom… Stranglethorn Vale
070 x Sungrass…………. The Hinterlands
015 x Khadgar’s Whisker Stranglethorn Vale
004 x Iron Bar ………….. Mining in The Badlands
001 x Black Vitriol………. Mining in The Badlands
004 x Purple Lotus………. Tanaris
004 x Firebloom…………. Tanaris
019 x Arthas’ Tears……… Western Plaguelands
040 x Blindweed…………. Zangarmarsh
055 x Golden Sansam…… Zangarmarsh
015 x Mountain Silversage Hellfire Peninsula
040 x Felweed…………….. Terrokar Forest
055 x Dreaming Glory……. Terrokar Forest
020 x Ragveil……………… Zangarmarsh
020 x Netherbloom……….. Netherstorm
015 x Talandra’s Rose……. Zul’Drak
050 x Goldclover………….. Howling Fjord
060 x Tiger Lily……………. Sholazar Basin
005 x Pygmy Suckerfish…. Fishing in Borean Tundra
010 x Adder’s Tongue……. Sholazar Basin
010 x Icethorn…………….. The Storm Peaks
165 x Lichbloom…………… The Storm Peaks
010 x Dark Jade…………… Mining Saronite/Titanium in Icecrown
010 x Huge Citrine………… Mining Saronite/Titanium in Icecrown
010 x Eternal Fire………….. Wintergrasp when your faction controls it or Seething Revenant
045 x Fire Leaf……………… Borean Tundra
015 x Frost Lotus…………… 6.5% chance at any node

Google is planning to launch an experiment that we hope will make Internet access better and faster for everyone. We plan to test ultra-high speed broadband networks in one or more trial locations across the country. Our networks will deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today over 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We’ll offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.

Check it out from the horses mouth.

One big thing I was thinking about is Worgen PVP Warriors with their 70% sprint for 6 seconds.  This is going to be insanely powerful.  Thoughts?

The vote is constantly ongoing and can be seen here.

The following is the list of changes Blizzard’s planning to make to Lich King-25 weapons:

• Royal Scepter of Terenas II: MP5 replaced with haste rating.
• Archus, Greatstaff of Antonidas: Critical strike rating replaced with haste rating.
• Heaven’s Fall, Kryss of a Thousand Lies: Armor penetration replaced with haste rating.
• Fal’inrush, Defender of Quel’thalas: Haste rating replaced with armor penetration.
• And on Lich King-10: Stormfury, Black Blade of the Betrayer: Armor penetration replaced with expertise.

Thanks to wow.com for the heads up on all this phat loot!

• Icecrown Citadel
  • Frostwing Halls, the final stronghold of the Scourge and their Lich King, has been added.
• Halls of Stone
  • Brann Bronzebeard has been getting into shape and now feels comfortable walking faster when escorted.
• The Forge of Souls
  • The Devourer of Souls will now cast Mirrored Souls less often.
  • The Spell Reflect ability has been altered on several creatures. It now has a cast time, only has 2 charges, and has a 75% chance of reflecting spells.
• The Nexus
  • Anomalus will now use the Create Rift ability only once, down from 3 times.
• The Old Kingdom
  • Elder Nadox now only gets one Ahn’Kahar Guardian during the encounter.
  • Jadoga Shadowseeker now only ascends once during the encounter.
  • Several enemies between the Befouled Terrace and The Desecrated Altar have been removed or had their pathing altered.
• Pit of Saron
  • Players can now zone back into the instance if they are dead while encounters with Krick and Ick or Forgemaster Garfrost are in progress.
• Utgarde Pinnacle
  • Skadi the Ruthless can now be removed from his drake with 3 harpoon strikes, down from 5.
  • Svala Sorrowgrave now casts Ritual of the Sword 1 time during the encounter, down from 3.
• Vault of Archavon
  • Toravon, the latest boss to join the Vault’s giants and masters of the elements, is now accepting challengers in 10- and 25-player formats.
• The Violet Hold
  • The time between a boss being defeated and a new portal opening has been decreased.

PvP

• All healing abilities (including items such as potions) will be decreased in effectiveness by 10% when in Battlegrounds, Arenas, or Wintergrasp.
• Arenas
  • Season 8 has officially begun featuring all-new rewards!

Druids

• Talents
  • Balance
    • Earth and Moon: This talent now increases the druid’s spell damage by 2/4/6%, up from 1/2/3%.

Shamans

• Talents
  • Elemental Combat
    • Shamanism: This talent now provides 4/8/12/16/20% extra spell damage to Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning, up from 3/6/9/12/15%, and 5/10/15/20/25% to Lava Burst, up from 4/8/12/16/20%.

Warlocks

• Talents
  • Affliction
    • Shadow Embrace: This effect can now stack up to 3 times, up from 2. However, the periodic healing reduction effect has been reduced from 3/6/9/12/15% to 2/4/6/8/10% per application.
  • Demonology
    • Demonic Pact: The damage bonus granted the warlock by this talent has been increased from 1/2/3/4/5% to 2/4/6/8/10%. The buff granted to a raid or party by this talent remains unchanged.
  • Destruction
    • Conflagrate: The damage-over-time effect of Conflagrate has been increased to 40% of the spell’s total damage, up from 20%.
    • Empowered Imp: The pet bonus damage provided by this talent has been increased to 10/20/30%, up from 5/10/15%.
    • Improved Shadow Bolt: Damage done by Shadow Bolt increased by 2/4/6/8/10%, up from 1/2/3/4/5%.

Warriors

• Talents
  • Protection
    • Concussion Blow: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 50%, but its threat generation will remain approximately the same.
    • Devastate: This ability now deals 120% of weapon damage, up from 100% of weapon damage.
    • Shield Slam: The damage scaling from block value for this ability now diminishes faster and diminishes starting at a lower block value. The difference should be negligible for players in high-end tanking armor. In addition, the threat caused by Shield Slam has been increased by 30%.
    • Warbringer: This talent no longer allows Charge and Intercept to break roots or snares. Intervene remains unaffected.

User Interface

• The party leader is now referred to as Guide in chat when a group is formed via the Dungeon Finder.
• Fixed a bug where players with Raid Assist capabilities were unable to perform a Ready Check.
• Fixed a bug where the first couple of tutorials were not displaying upon logging into the game.

Items

• New strength-based melee DPS rings are now available from representatives of the Ashen Verdict.
• Tier-9 Sets: The Aspirant vendors at the Argent Tournament grounds have worked out a deal with merchants in Dalaran so that all item level 232 set pieces will now be available on armor vendors in the city. Set pieces which require trophies will still be available for purchase only from vendors at the Argent Tournament grounds.
• Tier-10 Balance Druid 4-Piece Bonus: Fixed a bug to allow for this bonus to properly trigger.
• Tier-10 Elemental Shaman 4-Piece Set Bonus: Redesigned. Successful Lava Burst casts now increase the duration of Flame Shock on the target by 6 seconds.
• Tier-10 Tank Sets: The gloves and chest pieces for warrior, death knight, and paladin tanks have had their stats adjusted slightly to provide additional armor value.
• Tier-10 Warlock 4-Piece Bonus: This bonus should now correctly be applied to the warlock’s pet.

Technical Support

• The cvar ‘processAffinityMask’ controls which CPU cores are available for the World of Warcraft client to use. Previously the game client was limited to 2 cores as a default which players could override in the configuration file. In the past this provided a performance boost on some CPUs and operating systems. We have identified several systems that are experiencing severe performance issues with this restriction and have removed it. Players who would like to restore the old behavior can do so by updating the Config.WTF file by adding: SET processAffinityMask “3″.

Lich King Arthas:  Father, is it over?

King Terenas:  At long last, no king rules forever my son.

Lich King Arthas:  I see only darkness before me.

King Terenas:  …. There must always be a Lich King.

]]> http://multiboxing.com/world-of-warcraft/wow-game-news/breaking-news-fall-of-the-lich-king-movie/feed/ 3 http://multiboxing.com/world-of-warcraft/wow-game-news/world-pvp-guide-by-bergisst/ http://multiboxing.com/world-of-warcraft/wow-game-news/world-pvp-guide-by-bergisst/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:27:41 +0000 Tim http://multiboxing.com/?p=1007 Bergisst wrote an excellent post today on World PVP general strategies.  If you are new to World of Warcraft and want to engage in world PVP, this is a good read.

World PvP: Player versus Player in the big wide World of Warcraft. It generally means fighting outside of battlegrounds and arena–brawling in enemy cities, or chasing players out of your towns, etc.

For me, World PvP means World Defense. I enjoy going around to anywhere that is under attack and driving the attackers away. For others, it can mean fighting anyone you come across on a PvP realm, or it can merely mean Wintergrasp, Venture Bay, Spirit Towers in Auchindoun etc.
I may be on a Normal realm, but I’ve learned a lot about PvP in general since I began, and the differences between battlegrounds, arena and world PvP, and I’d like to share some tips and tricks with anyone just getting started.

1. General Tips
2. PvP Game Mechanics
3. Addons
4. Items
5. Class-Specific Advantages
6. Profession-Specific Advantages
7. World PvP Etiquette, Emotes and Communication

1. General Tips

These are some general things to keep in mind when PvPing. None will make or break your World PvP experience, but taken together, they can make the difference between a good solid raid and a weak, uncohesive group.

* /join WorldDefense–see ZoneDefense addon below, but this will let you know if enemies are coming your way or if one of your towns outside the zone you are in is getting attacked. Remember Europeans–Defense is spelled with an s

* Also use class-specific addons such as MageFever and De Ice for mages, and Horn of Winter for DKs etc.

* Hearthstone Alternatives for Non-Mages: Ring/Band/Loop/Signet of the Kirin Tor, Argent Crusader’s Tabard, Engineer’s ‘Wormhole Generator: Northrend’–using any of these allows you to set your hearthstone to somewhere that may often be attacked, for example The Crossroads, Tarren Mill or Splintertree Post for Horde, etc.

* Give Good Intel –if you are giving information to incoming backup, telling them “there’s a tauren in Goldshire” won’t help. Give race but also level, class and spec, as well as gear–good? PvP or PvE? An example of good intel would be “80 subt rogue, night elf, good PvE gear”–then your backup knows to expect very good stealth (based on race + spec), and heavy incoming damage but a squishy target. If the person is particularly skilled or unskilled, tell them that too. Note: If you’re using either Stalker or Paranoia addons (see below), you can use the addon to give a detailed alert to your guild, Local Defense, say, yell, party or raid channels, depending on the addon. The alert can include (again, depending on addon) player name, class, level, location (zone & coordinates) and last seen time.

* Remember to scout. If you’re on a PvP server, you can’t afford to send your group into a town that is under heavy attack without having a look first. If you have a rogue or druid, great! They should keep their distance and give you an accurate picture of what’s going on. If you don’t, use a hunter’s stealthed cat or spirit beast, or use shaman’s Far Sight (this can currently be chained for great distances) or a hunter’s Eagle Eye from a great range. REMEMBER that both Far Sight and Eagle Eye make a clearly visible effect (swirling light) where they are placed, so be careful–an alert opponent will know someone is watching.

* Find a Base–whether you are attacking an enemy town or defending your own, make sure to look in advance and find a safe place to res, eat, bandage, buff etc. should you die. If you’re going to die, die near here, or as far away as possible if you’re a stealthy class. Examples include rooftops, towers, buildings without npcs etc.

* Res Intelligently: as above, if you die during PvP you’ll need to find a place to res–but more often than not you can’t choose your point of death, and you’ll need to pop up out of enemy line of sight. This allows you to mount up and ride away or even to buff, drink etc if you are in a good enough spot–but remember a good enemy will know you’ve ressed and will be looking for you. Res behind a tree, inside a nearby building, up a steep slope that needs some fiddling to get up, etc.–anything that gives you a few seconds to prepare. REMEMBER you can see stealthed enemies while you’re a ghost, so find them first to be sure they aren’t camping your chosen spot.

* Know Your Graveyards: for both friends and enemies. For cities and even some towns, factions use different graveyards. You’ll need to know where you’re going when you die to more quickly get back into the fight, but more importantly you’ll need to know how long you have until your enemy turns back up and resses.

* Don’t go alone to chase a solo enemy after a group fight: this will split your own group up, and lay the path for you to be ambushed by a group of waiting opponenents. This goes with the next and most important tip of all:

* STAY TOGETHER. If you’re with a group, do NOT split up. Your strength is in your numbers, and a good enemy knows to send in a bait person (often a Death Knight with Pale Horse or a Paladin with Crusader) to lead some of you away before attacking again, or to ambush whoever chases the bait. The exception to this is sending scouts, but that should include one stealthed person rather than a whole group.

2.PvP Mechanics:

* Guards: Npcs generally call guards. If you’re trying to avoid killing questgivers, avoid being near them, or they will continuously call guards to kill you. If you’re Horde, this will generally show as “Goibon Uden lo” (Guards Help me!). I’m not sure what Alliance sees, but Horde Npcs generally shout “Guards!” If guards keep spawning on you and you’re low health, it’s probably because there is an Npc nearby spawning them. Kill it, but keep in mind its attack will likely spawn one to two more.

* Flags: Being PvP flagged means you can be attacked by the opposite faction’s players (Npcs can always attack you). Obviously if you attack anything, you get flagged; the same goes for healing, buffing or ressing flagged players (so if you don’t want to get flagged, don’t res fallen folks unless you know they aren’t!). However, what a lot of people don’t realize is–you can get flagged simply by standing in an enemy town, even on a Normal/RP realm. You may be sitting in a town for ten minutes without a problem and then suddenly your PvP will turn on, which is like Christmas to those eight enemies watching you. On Normal realms, you remain unflagged until you venture into some towns (random flags here) or until you go into enemy capital cities (instant PvP flag). On PvP realms, there is Contested territory where both sides get flagged automatically, Horde territory where only Alliance gets flagged, and Alliance territory where only Horde gets flagged. Typing /pvp will toggle your flag on and off in zones where it can be turned off. Whether you toggle it off or leave a PvP zone, there is a wait timer of 5 minutes before you unflag. The exceptions to this rule are taking a flight path or zoning into a dungeon; these things instantly unflag you.

* Local/World Defense Messages: These can be triggered either by player attacks or NPC attacks (I believe). Meaning, if someone kites the Pit Lord to Thrallmar, you’re going to see a LOT of messages. Likewise, if you kill a guard or npc, it will trigger a message. Player deaths do not, as far as I’m aware, trigger messages.

* Res Timers: The more often you die, the longer your wait to res, up to 2 minutes. Unlike battlegrounds or Wintergrasp, if you’re pvping in Elwynn Forest you need to try to NOT die. Especially if you’re with a group and winning or losing together, dying first can have a big impact on the fight–considering the enemy will have time to buff, eat and drink while you’re going to then res at 1/2 hp and mana, it can be the deciding factor in who holds their ground in the end. Remember too that when you first kill an enemy in a close fight, getting safe and eating should be your first priority, especially when a graveyard is near–the enemy could respawn directly on top of you and finish you off.

* Corpses: There seems to be a LOT of confusion here. If someone dies, they collapse on the ground and their name is still above their head. They can watch everything going on around them. After six minutes, or when they click Release Spirit, they go into ghost form and they will be at the graveyard as a spirit. At this point their body is lying on the ground, visible but with the name gone. IF THEY LOG OFF before releasing spirit, the body disappears entirely; if they resurrect, either at their corpse or a graveyard, their body disappears and leaves a skeleton in its place. Use the _Corpse addon mentioned below to get an instant view of a dead person’s status. **Currently, there is a very bad corpse bug–probably a fix by Blizzard regarding gold spammers’ corpses in capital cities. If you LEAVE THE AREA where a corpse is, even briefly, far enough so you can’t see it, you will NOT be able to see it when you return. Watch the death spot for a skeleton to appear to know when the enemy has ressed.**

1) We are changing talent trees, in some cases substantially. The major focus is pruning out boring but valuable talents that passively increase say damage or healing.

2) A secondary focus is to fix the clunky areas (e.g. warlocks having two conflicting range increasing talents). We’re not going to remove old favorites or radically change the focus of the trees. You will definitely have to rethink your builds however.

3) Because you earn passive bonuses just for spending points in the tree, those fun, niche or utility talents won’t seem as expensive as they do today. We want to create a lot more choices where you are choosing utility vs. utility. We want to see far more “cookie cutter” build guides that say “Spend the last 5-10 points where you want.”

4) In some cases, trees will flat out get new abilities. These are in addition to the new level 81+ abilities.

5) You will get 5 additional talent points for the new levels.

6) We are not deepening the trees. This actually unlocks some interesting opportunities. For the first time, you can reach a 51 point talent and a 21 point talent in another tree.

I’ll also add that for Lich King we just brought Naxxramas back and adjusted the bosses for 10 and 25 raid sizes. The Cataclysm raids are new content with new maps and new bosses. We’re just trying to hit the nostalgia button with mentioning old foes like Ragnaros. Ragnaros may be back, but he’s not in Molten Core.

Notice where he says “We want to see far more “cookie cutter” build guides that say “Spend the last 5-10 points where you want.”"  I believe the whole concept of cookie-cutter builds in this game is something that needs to be done away with.  Personally, saying cookie cutter builds are OK with a tiny amount of customization, is a bandaid at best, and a bad plan at worse.

What are your thoughts?  Discuss them in our forums!

World of War have an interview up with World of Warcraft player: Adrianne Curry.
http://wow.incgamers.com/blog/comments/celebs-playing-world-of-warcraft-adrianne-curry-interview/

TheBurningCrusade.pl have some nice updates this week. They have just recently released their new talent calculator, and a translated version of the story of Invincible.
http://www.theburningcrusade.pl/Talenty.html
http://www.theburningcrusade.pl/Aktualne-Wiesci/306/Invincible—historia-niepokonanego-rumaka-Arthasa.html

WoW Nederland have lots of updates this week. Articles include the preview of Arena Season 8 gear, new wallpaper of the Howling Fjords, a report on the creation of the Gunship Battle, and lastly a piece on DJ Nautilus’s remix of the World of Warcraft music!
http://www.wow-nl.com/nieuws.php?call=214
http://www.wow-nl.com/nieuws.php?call=213
http://www.wow-nl.com/nieuws.php?call=212
http://www.wow-nl.com/nieuws.php?call=210

World of ComicCraft:

I’m a hat on a cat!
http://www.lfgcomic.com/page/326

Serves those pansies right!
http://www.tehgladiators.com/?p=110

I hear there’s this creature with 50 pets!
http://www.darklegacycomics.com/222.html

There are more enemies up ahead!
http://beyondthetree.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/173-moving-on/

Welcome to Sholazar Basin!
http://woweh.com/?p=673

Our battle???. DO NOT USURP!
http://www.arena-inside.com/?p=497

If you haven’t already then you should update your Flash on your PC to version WIN 10,0,42,34 immediately!   To find your current flash version, visit http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/155/tn_15507.html and locate the “Your Player Version” box.  To update your flash, visit here.

If your version is NOT WIN 10,0,42,34 or higher then you should immediate update your flash, run an anti-virus program, and immediately change all of your important passwords.

Tell your guildies, your friends, and even your enemies to update their Flash.  Be safe!

Forum post:  http://multiboxing.com/forums/f2/update-your-flash-now-2167.html

Ancilorn from Blizzard has stated:

You’ve pitied and you’ve been pitied, but the time has come for the Night Elf Mohawk to pack up his Mohawk Grenades and move on. You looked goooood while his visit lasted, Azeroth, but his work here is done…for now.

General Issues

• Logging out inside a battleground and logging back in after the BG is completed will cause characters to be unable to queue using the Looking for Dungeon System.
• Spamming the Auto Attack button causes the character to play the attack animation even though no actual attack is done.
• Raid Assistants are unable to perform ready checks.
• Mobs will occasionally play their death animation twice after being killed.
• Mages, Warlock, and Priest cannot roll need on certain caster trinkets.

Dungeons & Raids

• Escape from Durnhold – At the end of the Escape from Durnholde instance Erozion teleports you back to Caverns of Time rather than where you entered the instance from.
• Halls of Reflection – Player will get disconnected when running up the ramp to the ship.
• Gunship Encounter – Some players may be ineligible to receive loot when this encounter is complete.
• Uldaman – The Shaft of Tsol or the Gni’kiv Medallion cannot be traded in a cross-server party.
• Halls of Reflection – There is a chance that the first encounter in Halls of Reflection will not start.
• Icecrown Citadel – Oozes from the Rotface encounter will occasionally refuse to combine.

Quests

• Horde players do not receive a parachute when the Kor’kron Troop Transport is destroyed during the quest, “Assault by Air”.
• Using Plague Vials for the Quest “Test at Sea” returns an error.
• The log description for “Hot and Cold” is inconsistent with the objectives
• Using Freshly Drawn Blood for the quest “Against the Legion” returns an error.
• Queen Angerboda is not respawning correctly for the quest “The Slumbering King.”
• Don Carlos is not dropping the quest item Don Carlos’ Hat.
• The Duskwood Chest does not contain Klaven Mortwake’s Journal needed for the quest “Klaven’s Tower.”
• Using the Mental Interference Rod for the quest “Teleport This!” returns an error.
• Grand Foreman Puzik Gallywix and Gallywix’s Lockbox do no drop items for the quest “Mission: Possible But Not Probable.”

Combat

• Several immobilize effects are not correctly affected by diminishing returns.
• The Lightweave effect is proccing off of Fel Armor’s Health Regeneration ticks.

Classes

• Druid
  
  
  • While swimming in Cat form or Travel form players nameplates are clipping through their model.
  • There is an issue with the Typhoon animation not always showing.
  • Druids can appear in flight form while mounted when leaving an instance or Battleground.
• Hunter
  
  
  • Attempting to use the ability Call Stabled Pet after leaving a cross server instance and changing specs will result in the cooldown being set to 20+ days.
• Mage
  
  
  • Mage Summon Water Elemental does not fully function as a permanent pet when glyphed with Glyph of Eternal Water.
  • Frost Nova does not have a spell effect when cast.
• Paladin
  
  
  • Avenging Wrath and self cast Lay on Hands cannot be used within 30 seconds of each other.
• Rogue
  
  
  • Rogue Poison procs are missing sound.

UI

• The dungeon finder visual UI will sometimes display inaccurate class archetype counts.
• The group “guide” is called “Party Leader” in chat.
• Several UI elements are displayed incorrectly in Nvidia 3D Vision.
• Alt-Tabbing in Full Screen mode while moving on click to move will cause your character to keep auto-running.
• Players cannot “Join as a Party” in the Looking for Dungeons Random Dungeon feature at certain levels.

Forum Post:  http://multiboxing.com/forums/f17/blizzard-speaks-up-recent-patch-issues-2133.html

This change will “double the value of resilience in reducing damage done by players,” according to Bornakk. Players will see a 10% to 20% reduction in damage taken. However, this change will not affect critical strike chances or critical strike damage. If healing becomes too over powered with this change, Blizzard has a “PvP only solution” ready to go, however they’re not rolling out that part of the changes just yet.

The full details after the break.

From Bornakk:

We are currently in the process of applying a hotfix to buff resilience. While some modifications may be made, we intend to have this buff in effect for the remainder of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.The change will double the value of resilience in reducing damage done by players. So depending on their current amount of resilience, characters might experience a 10 to 20% decrease in damage taken from other players. The critical strike chance and critical strike damage reduction components of resilience will remain unaffected by this change.

We are also aware of the possibility that this change will make healing in PvP too difficult to counter. While we are not making any immediate changes to address this issue, we have prepared some further changes that will allow us to quickly deploy a PvP-only healing adjustment if we feel it is warranted.

We will be applying this change very soon while we are between Arena seasons so we can evaluate how it works in multiple PvP scenarios for the upcoming Arena season, and as we continue to prepare for Cataclysm. As we have mentioned previously, one of the goals for Cataclysm is to have a PvP environment where it is harder to regularly achieve so much damage and healing in relatively few global cooldowns compared to what we currently have in the game.

• Tim:  2x Priests – Holy Spec
• Rob:  3x Hunters – BM Spec (Pet spec’d for tanking)

The general strategy was to run in, raise hell with aggro, and have the pets tank everything while the Hunters DPS’d with multishot a bunch.  At the same time, the Priests would go nuts casting Holy Nova, both for DPS and for healing.

Check out the video below of the actual live run without any edits.  Sit back, grab some popcorn, and let the full screen madness ensue!

Q. If damage and healing is too much per health ratio, then why don’t you have battlegrounds/arenas give a -30% damage/healing debuff?
A. We have been talking about solutions like that. It might feel a bit awkward, but it might also solve the problem and maybe it’s okay in the last season before an expansion to experiment a little bit.

Q. Is there talk of a fire shield spell for elemental shaman to use like water shield for restoration shaman?
A. Not at this time.

Q. Do you still have plans to implement guild housing?
A. Guild housing isn’t a priority. Aside from the huge development involved it gets people out of cities and into these private areas other players can’t see. We like cities to feel populated. But I’m not sure anyone expected WoW to be going as strong as it is after five years, so who knows in the future.

Q. Can you please explain why Feign Death is still on the Spell Hit metric, especially in raids?
A. It’s a known issue, but just has to do with the way the spell is set up. Melee and ranged attacks mean a very specific thing to the game engine. We’re hoping to be able to clean up some of this with the Cataclysm overhaul.

Q. All specs get a proc weapon from ICC25, except frost death knights and feral druids. Any plans to give these specs ICC25 proc weapons?
A. It’s tough when you get into the design mode of “everyone must be able to get something from every boss.” We try to cover a reasonable spread of players, but as with the Ashen Verdict rings and the Quel’delar, there are going to be some specs skipped over. We still love you.

Q. What is your stance on fire mage single target dps in comparison to arcane?
A. Fire mage is a little low. It’s also somewhat self-selecting because the most dps-obsessed players know arcane is higher and will gravitate accordingly. Fire will do better on multi-target fights, but there just haven’t been a lot of those so far. (We have adds, but they come in slowly.) Ideally fire would be closer to arcane.

Q. Icecrown introduced new gameplay mechanics similar to that of platform games/consoles. Will you continue this trend in Cataclysm?
A. Many of you guys and many of us have been playing WoW for a long time. We think it’s important to keep introducing new things to keep it feeling exciting and fresh. Some things work and we try and improve them over time. Some don’t work as well and we move on. We try to never move too far away from the core experience of swinging your sword / tossing a spell though.

Q. Any plans to increase the size of the backpack?
A. Yeah, it’s something we discuss a lot. On the other hand, the madness has to end somewhere. I’m not sure I want a 100 slot bag with that much stuff to manage. We’d need to make sure you could easily upgrade the existing backpack; we wouldn’t want anyone to manage to just be without any bags.

Q. Siege weapons were a unique game mechanic for Ulduar. What was the reasoning for not adding some form of Siege engine encounter in ICC?
A. We didn’t want to overdo it. In some ways the Ulduar vehicles was our chance to show that yes we can make vehicles a lot of fun (after say the experience of Malygos). Flame Leviathan was unique. The boat battle in Icecrown is unique. Not every raid needs siege tanks.

Q. Why were party leader rewards for the random heroic daily removed?
A. We didn’t want to encourage players who had no business leading groups to do so.

Q. When we reach level 58 in Cataclysm on Azeroth do we need to go to Outlands or can we continue leveling in Azeroth?
A. You eventually need to do the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King content. Azeroth will have a break in content between 60 and 80.

Q. Any plans on looking at balance druids, in particular to Eclipse procs? RNG sometimes is detrimental to our dps.
A. We don’t mind the RNG aspect that much per se, but losing an important proc because it happened at the wrong time (say just before you moved) is a problem. We have a pretty cool solution for Cataclysm if we can make it work. It makes Eclipse cooler but also gives Balance more of a kit in general.

Q. Paladin armor has gone all dark and gothic. When will we see armor that better represents iconic holy warriors?
A. Northrend is a pretty dark and gloomy place. Cataclysm will have more of an emphasis on say elements and dragons.

Q. Why is it tanking or healing that makes an encounter hard or easy? There isn’t much other than high dps to consider for damage dealers.
A. There are berserk timers that usually rest on the shoulders of the dps to beat. There are adds that need to be burned down, etc. Tanking and healing aren’t that hard on Deathbringer IMO (for example). Managing the adds is the key.

Q. Why is there hardly anything in Crystalsong Forest? It is a shame to see such a beautiful zone go to waste!
A. Yeah, it makes us sad. Part of the problem is that it sits beneath Dalaran, which ended up being more of a resource hog than we had anticipated. We didn’t want to draw too many more players to that zone. Initially the Crusader’s Coliseum was going to be there, which is why some of the quests send you there. We just worried too much about the performance hit. Anub’arak ended up working out well though in Icecrown.

Q. Wrath of the Lich King and Icecrown Citadel showed Blizzard using cut scenes more for dramatic purposes. Will you go back and add more for old world events?
A. We’d love to, but those things are not trivial to create so when we do more, I suspect they will be to tell new stories for Cataclysm rather than revisit old ones.

Q. When will we be able to fight the Lich King?
A. After you can conquer the Blood, Frost and Plague wings.

Q. With the new skins for druid forms, what is the chance that warlocks might see race/faction specific demon skins or maybe a new one?
A. When you look around, there are a lot of say imp or voidwalkers we could use. It’s something we talk about quite a bit. As for new demons, I hear warlocks are going to be getting some new spells for the next expansion…

Q. Why were no new daily quests (or something along those lines) added in 3.3?
A. We just have a limited amout of content we can do for a patch, even a big one. We try to offer something for everyone, but sometimes it’s better to deliver something awesome in one area (in this case, the raid and 3 dungeon wings) than try and add a little bit everywhere.

Q. Both balance druids (moonkin) and elemental shaman feel like their dps is falling behind in Icecrown Citadel. Any damage boosts for these hybrid casters currently planned?
A. We have small buffs coming in the next patch. We’ll see where they are after that when more encounters are open (including the hard modes) and once more players have tier sets and higher gear in general. We have no problem buffing them more if we need to.

Q. I don’t have a question but just a thanks. Thank you for making the Looking For Group tool. It’s sooooo useful.
A. Yeah, we love it around the office too. There was a lot of pressure to get it right after the first couple of attempts were lackluster. I try not to say stuff like this too often, but I think we really got it right. (Though there are a few kinks to unkink and polish we still plan to add.)

Q. How much will the incremental buff over time in Icecrown increase health, damage, and healing?
A. We haven’t completely decided, but something like 5%, similar to the Luck of the Draw buff.

Q. Any plans to make early leveling dungeons (Maraudon, Wailing Caverns, etc.) more new-player-friendly (ie. take less time)?
A. Yes. We can’t overhaul them all, but Cataclysm in a world with the Dungeon Finder means we should try and improve these.

Q. Were there any boss concepts you had for Icecrown Citadel that got cut? Any examples you can give?
A. There was early talk of different famous NPCs that could have been corrupted instead of Saurfang Jr.

Q. Arthas has been present everywhere in the expansion. Why haven’t we seen Blood Queen Lana’thel, Professor Putricide or any of the other bosses in low level zones?
A. Because we hadn’t created them yet. You saw plenty of a certain undead dragon however.

Q. Will there be any more developments on enchanting as a profession? We would love to do fun things like daily quests.
A. Sounds like a great thing to add for Cataclysm. We’ll have to wait and see though.

Q. Would you be willing to make personal bank storage look more like guild storage and available to all characters on a realm?
A. This is something we discuss a lot. It actually helps with keeping mail volume down as well as a player convenience.

Q. Will Mal’ganis have any involvement in patch 3.3?
A. He will continue to menace you in Culling of Stratholme.

Q. Will mages ever get to be the true masters of ports? By added more than just the main city’s or maybe decide our own areas?
A. We’ve been growing the number of places they can go over time. We’ll probably never get to the point where mages ignore ships, mounts or flight paths.

Q. Will the various faction leaders such as Tyrande and Cairne play a part in 3.3 or will they be marginalized?
A. We have a lot of NPCs active in the Northrend finale already. I’m not sure those two specifically need to play a big part. At some point your cast of characters is just too big to manage. The finale is a pretty major lore moment though. You’ll dig it.

Q. Have you considered making the Battered Hilt BoP?
A. Because better items would be available so quickly in the Icecrown raid, we thought we’d get more dynamic gameplay by letting players trade it. It also mirrored the first Quel as well.

Q. Will Ner’zhul appear at any point in 3.3 or the near future?
A. Well, he is a chunk of the Lich King now. But if you mean will he appear as an orc, we’re not ready to tell his story just yet. We have a lot of stories left to tell, but his is a good one.

Q. Are there any plans to change the Ashen Verdict tank ring to proc more often? The current uptime vs bosses is almost nonexistent.
A. We have been adjusting a lot of procs so far and this one is on our radar. Tanks still manage to avoid hits a lot, which makes the proc less useful.

Q. With all the mention of saronite, and old gods blood in the various 3.3 quest chains, will Yogg-Saron factor into Icecrown Citadel?
A. You mean your guild didn’t kill him?

Q. Are there plans to improve the Dwarven Racials? At this point anything is better than Find Treasure.
A. Well, we are adding Archaeology to WoW…

Q. You mentioned pet scaling being added for patch 3.3 but due to time constraints, was delayed. Will this be in the next patch?
A. We’ll try to do what we can. Technically it’s just more challenging than you might think. For Cataclysm, we have on our list that 100% of stats scale. If they don’t then certain stats just won’t be as valuable for pet classes. At the very least, we can do stuff like convert your X into damage for the pet so every stat is valuable. Getting everyone to scale with every stat better is a major goal for the class team for Cataclysm.

Q. Does Blizzard have anything in the works to offer former players of WoW?
A. Maybe we can give you a good reason to come back!

Q. You added Armor->Strength talents to discourage Plate from wanting DPS leather. Are there any plans to stop non-clothies from wanting Cloth?
A. Yes, we do have some plans.

Q. Are there more plans for unique weapon procs as the game goes forward? How do you see this affecting min/maxing?
A. We want to keep adding procs (and other interesting mechanics) to keep the items from feeling exactly like the item it’s replacing with a few more stats. We know they are harder to balance, but that’s part of the fun.

Q. City raiding seems like a great way to promote Horde vs. Alliance PVP, will there be additional incentives for this?
A. We like the idea of fighting in cities. We don’t like the idea of massive lag from having so many people in one area or players who are just wanting to play the AH or whatever getting nuked. We have some ideas for Cataclysm though.

Q. Can we expect a Canadian style pet for the Olympics this year?
A. I will put in a request today for an epic moose mount, not sure if it will make it in though.

Q. What are your opinions on Shadowmourne as a death knight tanking weapon?
A. Shadowmourne was designed as a dps weapon. If you can score one and want to socket stamina in it, I suggest parading around Dalaran just to rub it in.

Q. Have you thought about doing AP scaling for Thorns?
A. There’s no polite way to say this: Thorns needs some love. We just want to keep effects like this from excessively punishing fast-swinging attackers, because you know, we love rogues.

Q. Will rogues/hunters ever be able to dual wield hand-crossbows or pistols?
A. The pistol idea for hunters gets suggested a lot. It could either be an alternate to the gun / bow / crosssbow or something they use for short-range attacks. Rogues probably have plenty of weapons at this point.

Q. Are there any plans to fix the relative value of stats for certain specs? Eg.Strength being way better than Armor Penetration for Retribution Paladins or Armor Penetration being way better than Haste for Marksmanship Hunters.
A. For Cataclysm, absolutely. We’ll do what we can in the meantime, but it’s cruel to make players re-gear when they’re halfway through a new raid tier.

Q. For those of us who collect tabards and armor sets, do you see a way for us to store and not use our very limited inventory?
A. Yes. We’d like to store them the same way you do titles. In general, we don’t want to punish the packrats out there who just like to collect stuff. We will have to wait and see what we can do about it though.

Q. Will we see any new world bosses in the near future?
A. I’d never say never given that we haven’t designed patch 6.0 yet, but they do present some problems for large organized groups trying to make mutliple attempts without interference.

Q. If there is one thing that you wanted to have added to ICC/WOTLK in general, what would that have been?
A. More Azjol-Nerub. Threre’s a lot of things we could have done with the underground empire, from a raid zone to a world zone. I hope we get to someday. Personally, I’m a big fan of the whole underdark vibe.

Q. Are heirloom items and the recruit a friend system going to work at the start of Cataclysm, in particular for Worgens?
A. Most likely heirlooms. For recruit a friend, we’ll have to see. We understand some players want to get to the end game as fast as possible. Maybe the realm first achievements should state “without XP bonuses.”

Q. How will you handle beta testing if you don’t want to spoil the Worgen/Goblin starting areas?
A. We didn’t want to spoil them in Blizzcon. I imagine they will be in the beta. On the other hand, you can play the new higher-level zones if you don’t want to spoil it. The goblin starting zone will blow your mind!

Q. Will we ever see proper physics/animation for chain weapons? Will we ever GET chain weapons?
A. We’d love to. Whips too. It’s just expensive (in terms of time) and we have to prioritize if it comes at the expense of something else (new dances maybe, or the animation for a new Cataclysm mob).

Q. Will you guys have Worgen/Goblin race change on lock until somebody on the realm gets to level 85 as a Worgen/Goblin?
A. We’ll probably delay it for a few weeks or months. We haven’t fully decided.

Q. What will Cataclysm have to offer for solo players?
A. Cataclysm has a ton of new quests both in the new zones and in old familiar areas. There will be just a ton to do. Also if you’re a completionist casual type, one word: Archaeology.

Q. Why not give all the races the ability to be every class?
A. We’re getting pretty close to that in Cataclysm. Some combos just don’t make sense though. Goblin paladins strike me as bizzare.

Q. Will Cataclysm bring the return of special-proc items such as The Unstoppable Force?
A. One of the fun aspects of looking at those old zones are the chances to try and hit up all the nostalgia for things like that. So, yes.

Q. What knowledge have you gained from WotLK/ICC in regards to your future design plans for Cataclysm?
A. That’s a broad question for just 140 characters! I’ll say one thing we learned in retrospect was that the progressive badge structure has ended up confusing. We have a simpler one in mind that accomplishes the same goals.

Q. Will you be emphasizing more on Horde vs. Alliance hatred in the future?
A. It’s a major focus for Cataclysm. Neither Garrosh nor Varian is a major fan of cross-faction cooperation.

Q. What’s up with the pineapple wallpaper in Gadgetzan?
A. You will soon see in Cataclysm that goblins have a somewhat inscrutable sense of taste. They also like tropical drinks.

Q. Will Trolls ever get either their own capitol, or a district in Orgrimmar like the Gnome district in Ironforge?
A. Personally, I think it adds a little to the troll story that they have such an amazing cultural legacy and have fallen so far from that in recent history. That said, we have a little bit of love for trolls in Cataclysm (beyond the ability to be just about every class in the game).

Q. Following the upcoming protection warrior PvP nerf, do you plan to make our abilities focus on doing threat instead of damage?
A. We are applying threat modifiers where we nerfed damage. We’d also like to boost sustained protection warrior damage (for PvE) without adding too much burst (for PvP).

Q. Did Ghostcrawler ever give out those ponies he promised?
A. First, are you a paladin? If so, then no ponies for you. Everyone else can have a very small pony. In the DK case, a very, very small hero pony

“This is just a question I’ve been wondering about and that is how has burst gotten to be so high? I’ve been watching some of the BC pvp vids and the damage seemed significant but never this crazy “global or be globaled” stuff we see currently. Were there any reasons or factors that contributed to Burst getting so high or is it just the natural trend of things?”

To which Blizzard responded (in 2 posts):

“We think everything is a little too intense right now, almost like playing the game on fast forward. Yes, damage can come in too quickly, but that is partially because healing is also so huge that without some amount of burst, it would seem as though nobody would ever die. It’s as if players are either at 100% health or 0% health, and very infrequently effective in between. If we just drastically toned down PvP damage across the board — say, by inflating resilience or health pools — then healers would dominate, much as was the case in The Burning Crusade. In return, the only way to win a match would be to chain crowd control or possibly mana drain the healer. We certainly want to make sure these abilities have their place in PvP, but the game can also be frustrating when excessive healing gives players the feeling that fights are just being reset consistently until healers are completely out of mana (which in most cases can take a very long time).

On the flip side, we could tone down damage and healing, but that has huge PvE ramifications and we’re not ready to re-balance the entire game — though this is the intent for Cataclysm. What we’ll likely do for the next expansion is ramp damage up a little as players advance, but have health pools increase greatly and healing increase by marginal amounts. The same change would have benefits for PvE too because mana then becomes a consideration for healers — they must make a more determined choice between an efficient strategy and a spamming strategy — and tanks won’t constantly face dying by two unfortunate strikes. In PvP, you’ll ideally see more players in a wounded state, and they can eventually be worn down rather than blown up in a couple of global cooldowns.

We are discussing the idea of increasing the benefits of resilience for the next Arena season. We will have to see what effect this has on healing and whether or not weapon inflation from the newest items can adequately offset any of those effects.”

So what are your thoughts, is resilience the way to balance out PVP?  Something tells me that I am not so sure..

Tim – 2x Priests, currently both Holy spec

Rob – 3x Hunters, currently both BM spec

The reasoning behind the team composition is that the BM pets should easily be able to tank with the hunters contributing the bulk of the groups DPS, while at the same time healing the pets through pet and hunter talents.  The dual priests will float around spamming Holy Nova, contributing nicely to group DPS while at the same time keeping huge heals up on the entire group including the pets.

Below is a video of doing Stockades with this team make up.  Enjoy!