It's been a while since Cataclysm was first announced. While we know many of the big changes - new races, cosmetic changes to Azeroth, and new dungeons - the more important under-the-hood updates have been a mystery. Now, though, it seems Blizzard is ready to spill the beans, at least somewhat. After a Q&A session this weekend on Twitter, Blizzard developers posted a large list of tweaks to World of Warcraft's statistics system that are on the way in the new expansion.
The biggest news is that a few stats are just gone, period. Block value, MP5, weapon skill, defense, and attack power are all out the door, or at least receiving major tweaks.
Shields will now grant a 30% passive block bonus across the board, while defense is now simply going to be offloaded to dodge, parry, and block. Blocking will simply mean "30% less damage", instead of the more complex system in place at the moment.
The other interesting change is weapon skill, which is simply vanishing. Classes are going to start with all the skills they need, instead of having to train up with any new weapon type they find. It does seem like a fairly useless stat, considering it takes about ten minutes to get to maximum skill with some weapons.
The full details, and discussion on the upcoming changes, can be found
in our forums. You can read the full post from Blizzard here.
Either way, if you're one of those folks weird enough to get up early on a Saturday morning, you may as well grab another hour or sleep or so, since you may not be able to jump on WoW for a 15 minute window. There's still no word on Tuesday's downtime, so maybe we were spoiled by the past couple of weeks. Then again, maybe they're just seeing if they can get that minor patch ready for a release this week too. Either way, keep it here, and we'll keep you informed.
When I was writing about the raid access progression for Icecrown Citadel, we talked about the limited attempts for certain bosses. It’s certainly not a new idea since Trial of the Grand Crusader had it too. The only difference is that in ToC, the limited attempts was only optional as far getting the better loot is concerned while in ICC, there is no option. When Blizzard first came out with the announcement to have limited attempts for the ICC bosses, I had an idea of how it worked but there were still some points that needed clarification. It turns out that what I initially thought was really correct, based on CM Bornakk’s post on limited attempts.
According to Bornakk, the limited attempts only apply to a few bosses, namely Professor Putricide, Blood Queen Lana’thel, Sindragosa, and the Lich King. The number of attempts that you have listed for the week is shared by those bosses so if you have 15 attempts and it takes you 5 tries to kill one, you’ll only have 10 more attempts for the rest. The number of attempts you have for the week will continue to increase as the wings get unlocked. With the opening of Crimson Halls this week the number is set at 20.
This really forces raids to take not of how many attempts they have left and really budget their wipes. You wouldn’t want to finally get to the Lich King only to find out you have so few attempts left.
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we discuss some of the tips and tricks to remember when raiding Icecrown Citadel's second wing, the Plagueworks.
Blizzard has stepped up the pacing mechanic in Icecrown Citadel, releasing each new wing in two week intervals. With the latest wing, the Crimson Halls / Blood Wing (also called Vampire Wing if you're a Twilight fan), recently unveiled, there's bound to be a ton of interest in raiding ICC on your server. This week, I'd like to talk about the bosses that were released in the previous wing, the Plagueworks (Unholy). Once I get a chance to fight the Blood Princes and Blood Queen Lana'Thel first-hand, I'll have a write-up posted here.
The Plagueworks revolves around Professor Putricide and his two abomination creations: Rotface and Festergut. Each of his children have a 'dog' to call their own, and plenty of trash guarding the way to their inner sanctum. These fights are a tier above what you've faced so far in Icecrown, and will push your DPS, your awareness, and your reaction times to the limit. Don't hold back in the Plagueworks: use every consumable and tactic available to maximize your DPS, or find yourself facing one of a few very interesting enrage timers. Unfortunately for us, as you can see in the picture above, our view for the first two encounters involves standing behind bosses that resemble a pair of deformed potatoes.
It was announced today that there will be a major change to resilience, which is being hotfixed into the game as we approach the new arena season. The change is expected to be in place for the duration of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion; which we take to mean it will not carry over into Cataclysm.
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.
Why the Blizzard Authenticator can save your account.
Rumors have been pounding the World of WarCraft community about requiring the Blizzard Authenticator just like they required the Battle.net account merger.
Despite the fairly slow news week, we had a good WoW Insider Show podcast this Saturday, with Project Lore writers Tim "Heartbourne" Tusing and Jimmy "DJTyrant" Blocksom stopping by to offer their unique perspective on reader emails, the week's top stories, and having too little to talk about, for once. We discussed Sam Raimi's newfound freedom to work on the Warcraft movie, the Blizzard dev chat on Twitter, why tauren paladins really aren't that broken, and a myriad of other topics.
As always, you can email theshow@wow.com to have your email answered on the air, and if you have any guests you'd like to see on the show (or you'd like to be a guest yourself!) you can get a hold of us the same way.
Get the podcast:
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Zach thinks Conan is funnier. This has nothing to do with World of Warcraft. But it's good to say it, anyway.
Considering that we have ourselves a bit of time before the next exciting thing comes out -- Cataclysm and the new Battle for Gilneas Battleground -- I thought it'd be a good time to write up a quick guide to fighting the different classes. Since we ended last year with a basic primer to the battlegrounds, we'll use the start of the year and the lull before the next expansion to compile a guide to fighting the different classes. That should probably hold true for a bit until Cataclysm turns our World of Warcraft upside down.
Let's start with the druid. My excuse was that we're supposed to do this alphabetically, but I realized that death knights actually come before druids now. While Blizzard has always tried to maintain a balance among classes in a rock-paper-scissors kind of way, I don't think anyone -- regardless of what class they play -- who has ever encountered a druid has snickered to himself about how easy the fight is going to be. Druids, by and large, have a very high survivability as a class. Pair this with their supreme mobility and you've got one hell of a fight on your hands.
The other day I was going through the guild bank to check for the availability for a certain item. Then it sort of hit me that even a well organized guild bank with separate tabs for different kinds of items can be a bit of a pain to go through. I’m no stranger to disorganized storage for our in game items since all my characters’ items only have a basic level of order. But looking through entire guild banks requires some time.
I know there are addons out there that help organize your bank space but I don’t think there’s one that helps you really find stuff. it would really be great if Blizzard would implement an addon that acts like a search engine for storage that you can access, whether it be your bags, your bank or your guild bank. Blizzard already has exactly what I want in the game, but it’s not being used for storage items. I’m talking about the “search engine” being used in the Auction House. Imagine if you’re looking for a certain gem or glyph and when you get to the bank you just type the name into a search bar and ‘Presto!’ there it is for the taking. This helps especially if you’re just checking for availability since it will save a lot of time.
I know this isn’t really a big issue for a lot of people so I doubt if Blizzard will ever take to effort to put this in the game any time soon, if at all, but it’s still a cool idea.
The fact that there are people who just like to collect stuff is a fact that Blizzard knows and has recognized their needs in many ways before. We’ve already seen things like non combat pets and mounts as well as alternate currencies like Marks of Honor and Badges of Justice/WoTLK Emblems banished away from our inventory and into special tabs. The resulting savings in bank/bag space was a god-send for these guys who like to collect stuff and also for the regular folk who could use the space.
The only real things left that people collect just like mounts and pets that’s still taking up space is the Tabard and Armor sets. Unlike the others, it does make sense though that tabards and especially armor sets are in the inventory. After all, we do equip them and they have a visual effect (and statistical effect for armor sets) on the character wearing them. But Blizzard does recognize the need to banish them away from the inventory. In the recent Developer Twitter Chat, it was revealed that Blizzard does have future plans to do just this. They have plans for tabards and armor sets to be stored the way titles are currently handled. This way players will be able to collect as many as they choose without the consequences such collecting has on bag space.
I can see this happening for tabards but I’m not sure it makes as much sense for armor sets though. I mean armor sets do have visual benefits that a player might not want to part with but these things also give statistical bonuses. Maybe it’s just me but it’s odd to see actual gear be treated the same way as a mount or a non combat pet. I can definitely see the appeal of someone running around in full T2 as their “city attire” though since such pieces were considered very nice and even nostalgic of those days.
One thing I noticed when Blizzard banished pets and mounts away from the inventory, that gave Blizzard more room to come out with more and more new pets and mounts. Storage space was not a factor anymore anyway. Perhaps when Blizzard does the same for tabards, we’ll also see more and more tabards coming!
