Patch Highlights 2.4.0

Well WoW 2.4.0 is now live. I was bored at work yesterday (like really bored) so I read the patch notes (ok not all of them, but the important stuff). And I'm bored again today, so I figured I'd go through them and pick out a few of the highlights, for the benefit of those who have less time on their hands than I do.

General

• The Sunwell Isle is now available for play. This area includes a new quest hub and 5 and 25-player instances. (New areas and instances are always good. . . even though I umm. . . still don't have a 70 to make use of them.)

• Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers. (Yay! Of course I just did this two days before the patch came out and had to spend money on re-training!)
• Spirit-Based Mana Regeneration: This system has been adjusted so that as your intellect rises, you will regenerate more mana per point of spirit.
• Weapon Skill: Points will be gained faster in weapon skills for levels 1 through 59.
• The Daily Quest limit has been increased to 25. (I guess that's good, but I've never even gotten close to 10.)

Druids

• Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 10/20% while in Cat form. (Very exciting! My feral druid's bonus healing more than tripled over night. To bad the bonus to inbound healing doesn't effect bear form too.)
• Regrowth: The mana cost of this spell has been reduced by approximately 20%.

Mages

• Blink, Slow, and Spellsteal have all had their mana cost reduced.
• Icy Veins no longer increases the chance your chilling effects will Freeze the target, but now increases the chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting any spell by 100% while active.
• Mana Shield: This spell will now get a percentage of the Mage’s bonus to spell damage as an additional effect.
• New Talent: Molten Shields will cause your Fire Ward to have a 10/20% chance to reflect Fire spells while active. In addition, your Molten Armor has a 50/100% chance to affect ranged and spell attacks.
  

Paladins

• Avenger’s Shield: This ability will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. I.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc. (This seems like a pretty big deal and excellent news for tankadins.)
• Holy Shock: The healing, damage, and mana cost of this spell have all been increased.
• Turn Undead(Rank 3):This spell has been reworked and has been renamed to “Turn Evil”. It will now work on Demons in addition to Undead. Turn Evil is subject to diminishing returns, and lasts 10 seconds in PvP. (Turn is very situational, but this is a nice little buff nonetheless. And it makes sense, lore-wise.)

Priests

• Chastise no longer disorients the target, but now is instant cast and roots the target for 2 seconds. (Not sure yet whether this is good or bad.)
• Mass Dispel now affects a maximum of 10 targets, increased from 5.
• Power Infusion: Infuses the target with power, increasing their spell haste by 20% and reducing the mana cost of all spells by 20%. Lasts for 15 seconds.This will not stack with other haste effects, such as Heroism, Bloodlust, or Icy Veins.
• Reflective Shield: The reflective damage from this talent no longer breaks crowd control effects which break on taking damage.

Rogues

• Sap mechanic changed from “Incapacitate” to “Sap”. This will allow more humanoids that were previously immune to Sap to be vulnerable to Sap, but still immune to Gouge. Note that anything that removed Sap previously will still remove Sap after the change.
• (There's some other Rogue stuff, but I don't know enough about the class to determine if it's important or not.)

Shaman (apparently this is the singular and plural form)

• Earth Shield: Mana cost reduced roughly in half, and charges reduced from 10 to 6.
• Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3. (Does that mean it can be instant with talents? I haven't tried but it sounds like it. . . that's sweet!)
• The Global Cooldown of all Totems has been reduced to 1 seconds, down from 1.5 seconds. (Moderately helpful.)
• Shamanistic Rage is now a Physical ability instead of a Magic spell, and thus is no longer dispellable. It now reduces all damage taken by 30% and gives your successful melee attacks a chance to regenerate mana equal to 30% of your attack power. This lasts for 15 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown.
• Totem timer icons will now show up under your player portrait when you cast totem spells. Right-clicking a totem timer icon will destroy that totem. (One less thing to use an add-on for. And the ability to selectively destroy a totem is long over-due.)

Warlocks

• Ritual of Summoning can be used to summon players into instances if they meet the instance requirements. (This is good news for everyone!)

Warriors

• Cleave: This ability will no longer strike any secondary target which is under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.

PVP

• Honor will now be instantly calculated, and available for player use.
• Arenas
• Queue times for arena matches have been reduced. Players will now be able to enter matches faster than previously.
• Battlegrounds
• If a player dies 50 times or more in a battleground, they will no longer be worth honor for the remainder of that battle. (50 times?! Ouch!)
• Warsong Gulch
• When both flags are held, the flag carriers will receive 50% increased damage done to them after approximately 10 minutes and 100% increased damage after approximately 15 minutes. (I've been in some looong WSGs. . . this is an interesting approach to take to addressing both teams turtling with the flag.)
• Flag carriers can now be tracked 45 seconds after picking up the flag.

Quests

• Dungeon and Group Quest Experience: The amount of experience awarded for dungeon and 5-person group quests in Outland has been increased in almost all cases.
  
• Increased the slots on Old Blanchy's Feed Pouch to 8. (It's about time!)

Dungeons and Raids (None of these mean much to me yet, but they seem important.)

• All 25-player raid bosses have had their cash drops increased!
• All 25- player raid bosses that drop set tokens will now drop an additional token!
• Badges of Justice have been added to all raid bosses who did not previously have them!
• Players will no longer require an attunement quest to enter Hyjal.
• Players will no longer require an attunement quest to enter the Black Temple.
  
• You may now fight Prince Kael’thas and Lady Vashj without first killing all the other bosses in their respective dungeons.
• Non-corporeal Undead and Mechanical creatures are now susceptible to bleed effects. (Hmm, this strikes me as an unnecessary and questionable--from a basic logic and lore standpoint--change. But I haven't been into any raids or high level dungeons, so I really don't know.)
• Hellfire Citadel: Magtheridon’s Lair
• Many gameplay elements of the encounters in Magtheridon’s Lair have been changed to decrease their overall complexity and difficulty. (Again, I haven't been in here. . . but it's been made easier. Was it too hard before?)
• Karazhan
• Players will no longer need the Master’s Key to enter Karazhan. The gates to Karazhan will still require the Master’s Key to be unlocked. (I know getting "Karazhan keyed" was a big deal before, so this sounds pretty significant.)

User Interface

• The Interface Options screen has been completely redesigned. AddOns that interact with the Interface Options screen will need to be updated.
• Players will now be able to inspect other players via their chat link.
• The friends list now has a notes field per friend. Click on the note icon to add a note for a particular friend.
• There is now a UI option to display free bag space. When turned on, your backpack will display the total number of free spaces available in all your bags. (About time. . . another add-on bites the dust!)
• You can now link quests into the chat log by Shift-Clicking on the quest name in the quest log. (This is way past due! Thanks, Blizz.)
• In Master Loot mode, all players in the group will see sparkles on corpses that have loot above the master loot threshold. This lets everyone see what the master loot items are, though they cannot interact with them. Only the master looter can loot those items still.e quest log.

World Environment

• A mailbox has been added to the inn in Darnassus. (Seriously, what took so long?)
• The Ratchet bank now has access to the Guild Vault.

Bug Fixes

• Ogri'la Peacekeeper's weapons have been scaled to a size more appropriate for keeping the peace. (Don't know what this means, but it made me laugh anyway.)
• Zeppelin Master Zapetta will no longer become confused about whether the zeppelin in Orgrimmar is arriving or leaving. (Another funny one.)
• Sending mail to a non-existent character will now result in players getting the message, “Cannot find mail recipient”.
  

There are some conspicuous differences between the PTR patch notes and the ones that went live...

Present in PTR but lacking in live:

• Hunters: Multi-Shot: This ability will no longer strike any secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
• Shaman: Chain Lightning: This ability will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
• Druids: Swipe: This ability will no longer strike any secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
• Warlocks: Felguard Cleave: This ability will no longer strike any secondary target which is under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. ie. Polymorph, Sap, etc.

Curious (and frustrating) that some classes got a very nice CC-related multi-target change and others did not. I hope it's just because Blizzard was having problems with some of the abilities and they'll add it in a future patch (2.4.1 perhaps).

How to Befriend a Tankadin

As one of our guild's two resident tankadins, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how to best interact with various dps classes. Basically, two big factors distinguish paladins from warriors/druids:

1) Most of our threat generation is passive, resulting from AoEs or being hit. This means that if you draw aggro, it's much harder for us (if our taunt is on cooldown or the mob is untauntable) to get it back.

2) We use mana instead of rage. Since we regain mana from being healed, the important part of this is that we need to be taking damage in order to produce threat -- even more so than a warrior, I believe, although I do not have a level 70 warrior tank to compare. Initially, it may seem like it's the other way around, since the link between warrior damage and threat generation is one step instead of two, but I believe that it is even more important for a tankadin to be taking damage.

A couple of things you might want to know: we start many pulls by throwing our shield, which produces a lot of threat on three enemies -- less if it misses one, never more. The shield moves in what I believe is a deterministic way, but it's not always obvious which enemies it will hit. Also, our taunt has a longer cooldown than a warrior's: 15 seconds instead of 10. Compensating for this: we taunt all enemies off a given ally instead of just one, and we don't need to be in melee range to do it.

With this in mind, here's a rough guide on how to interact with DPS classes:

1) Rogue: The worst thing that can happen to us is to have a rogue stunlock the main target. Because our threat generation is passive, we need to be getting hit to maintain aggro, and also having the enemy stunned means we are taking less damage. If you are a rogue and you want your tank to like you, don't stunlock the main target or really anything; you will have it stuck to you, and a quick vanish just means that your healer will die instead, because we haven't gotten a whole lot of threat on it. Obviously, stunlock can be useful for temporary mitigation, but be sure your tank approves. Meanwhile, the sap presents an interesting challenge, in that we have to make sure that the shield doesn't hit it. This is usually difficult, because the best way to do this is to sap something in back, which is harder. I usually facepull when sap is in effect, which of course means dps needs to back off a bit and the healer needs to be ready.

2) DPS plate: No particular ramifications. If there is a ret paladin, they should make sure to slap on a seal of the crusader (improved) which they were probably going to do anyway, and sanctity aura (same deal) -- both of these results in us doing more holy damage, which is most of our damage, and which via Righteous Fury means tons of threat. Life should be pretty easy with a ret paladin around as far as threat goes. For fury and arms warriors, no real special treatment.

3) Hunter: The hunter can do many clever things which will help us. Because we're weak on ranged, misdirect pulls will often come in very handy for line of sight; the holy shield has a 30 yard range, instead of 35 for shooting. Note that the hunter can MD you and then you can scamper out of sight for an instant line-of-sight pull. If you have a particularly excellent hunter, they can MD, give you lots of threat on the primary target, and then trap a secondary target. MD also obviously combines well with a sapped enemy for line of sight pulls.

Freezing traps present a problem for the shield. Optimal, obviously, is to not have the shield hit the freezing trap. If there are 3 or fewer enemies, or you don't know where the shield is going necessarily (I believe it jumps to the nearest enemy with ties broken by distance to you, it hitting the nearer one, but this may not be reliable and distances may not be easy to ascertain), this may not be possible. Hunters need to generate more threat on the target than they may be used to from warriors -- a Distracting Shot and a couple more hits should do the trick.

We have an advantage on trap resists, since we can taunt the mob back from afar; of course, if we threw our shield, the hunter can just feign death and we'll get the mob back.

4) Mages -- the shield throw is huge here. If you hit the to-be-sheeped mob with your shield, then the sheep will come to you if it breaks or is resisted, instead of the usual beeline for the hapless mage. I'm not sure how aggro generation for an enemy in sheep form works -- I think there is none, which means that if you have hit it with the shield, no matter how many times it's resheeped, it will likely come for you when it's done. Also, because the target is dazed, it comes for you slowly, which means the mage has plenty of time to sheep it before the mobs come into where you have placed the fight and will be concentrating. This is an excellent dps class for a paladin to work with, not even counting the oh-so-useful biscuits.

5) Warlocks -- warlocks can go more nuts with us than with warriors, because of the threat we generate on all the mobs. In particular, a warlock can usually get away with a DoT or two on each mob. Obviously, don't overdo it, but your tankadin should be able to hold threat with one or two torture devices in place. Banish is also a nice device, because you can consecrate through it. Seduction is quite iffy, on the other hand, because it's hard to maintain it in place since there is an interval in between and the mob is likely to run into our consecrate in the meantime.

6) Shadow priests -- you're in luck. Your Vampiric Embrace will no longer cause all the mobs to hate you. Also, when you mind control a guy and it fails, we're there to save the day instantly with a taunt. No need to thank us -- that mana we're getting back from VE is more than enough.

7) Shamans -- no particular notes, as far as I can tell. Mana spring totems make us happy.

8) Cats -- see rogues, minus comments about sap.

9) Boomkin -- no particular notes. It's worth noting that I haven't run nearly as much with the last three items on this list, so there may be ramifications I'm completely missing.

Curator Down!

Eight Lambdas and two esteemed colleagues waltzed into Karazhan this morning and downed Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Crone, and Curator in just about 3.5 hours. Nice! Many phat lewts were obtained, including Legacy for our hunter friend and T4 gloves for Crushey.

First, the obligatory "Curator down" screen shot:


Plus, a bonus group photo:


Woohoo!

Nola's Visit to Karazhan

Nola recently picked up her Karazhan key and decided to check the place out. It's quite the intimidating place for a tiny gnome!

Undaunted, Nola walked up to the gate and unlocked it using her shiny new key. The gate popped open, and in she went, only to find herself staring at the front door.

After seeing this door, she has some suggestions for the tower's staff on accommodating their smaller guests. At any rate, nobody answered, so she figured she'd save them the trouble and let herself in.

In the tower's entry, she introduced herself to a friendly and well-dressed doorman, who told her a bit about the tower.

Seems like such a friendly fellow... Now why couldn't he have opened the door? Anyway, she figured she'd start her tour at the stables.

Quite an offer! Can you believe he refused? Nola decided to spare him (this time), but Mr. Midnight is certainly off her Christmas card list. She headed back to the main ballroom but got a bit lost on the way...

Yikes! They should clean out this place a bit more carefully. Good thing those spiders weren't too bright... Anyway, she eventually made it to the main ballroom.

Quite the party! Nola was excited to see so many other partially-visible guests, but they didn't seem to notice her. It's probably for the best--she's not much for dancing with giants, particularly when they look so hostile!

Unfortunately, some of the tower's staff members weren't quite as welcoming as the doorman.

A quick apology (and a Vanish, for good measure) kept things peaceful, and Nola managed to make it to the banquet hall. Seizing the opportunity, Nola tried to dance on the banquet table, only to have her offer rebuffed in a most uncivilized manner.

Honestly, she has never seen worse treatment of a friendly (and tiny, and mostly invisible) guest. Next time she'll be back, and with reinforcements! Pointy reinforcements...

[time passes]

Sure enough, a few months later, Nola is back for a second visit to Medivh's famed tower! She was invited to visit the tower by nine of her closest Alliance friends (well, eight friends and a really surly dwarf), and she allowed them to witness as she single-handedly delivered Midnight's comeuppance. She decided that it was rather rude to take all the fun and challenge out of her friends' visit, though, so she kindly allowed them to fight their way through the rest of the tower without her assistance. Despite the fact that they no longer had the benefit of her legendary combat prowess, they seem to have done well for themselves. Nola visited the tower after their departure for a quick victory lap, and she took some photos while she was at it...

First, we have the aptly-named "broken stair". It's a stair, and it sure is broken. It seems everyone is so enthralled with the opera house downstairs that nobody has managed to maintain the rooms upstairs.

Thankfully, the tower isn't all so unsightly. It soon leads to a quaint hallway ordinarily watched by the so-called Curator.

Honestly, Nola questions the taste of any "Curator" who chooses to display those green-eyed gargoyles. Yecch. But you ain't seen nothin' yet...

HOLY MOTHER OF MEKKATORQUE! They put a giant statue of a freakin' dwarf in this place? Not even Blackrock Depths was this bad. Nola posed in front of it, in order to suggest a more suitable subject matter, should the owners choose to commission some new art.

Next up, we have the library, and what a library it is!

Truly dizzying! Nola was hardly able to take her eyes off the architecture, until she happened to spy a familiar-looking name in the corner.

Sadly, he assured Nola that he has no knowledge of this "Gravalun" fellow [ed: guild 'lock] and fears that he may be some sort of imposter. Oh well!

Anyway, you recall that this is a library, right? The kind where you store books? Well, not this one!

FIRE! It's a fire! They're burning books! What kind of twisted library is this? No help came, though, and Nola felt it would be a bit suspicious to stick around.

Fortunately, the rest of the library contains a number of books that are not currently on fire. In fact, there are a number of distinctly non-fiery books lying around, and I do mean lying around. Honestly, it's enough to cause anyone with a library science degree to rupture an artery or three. Nola made the best of a bad situation.

After that brief detour, Nola pressed on, climbing to dizzying heights in this Escher-esque library. Don't look down!

Even up here, though, the place is littered with the results of what is, frankly, some pretty sloppy bookkeeping.

To be honest, Nola was beginning to tire of all of these ridiculous books. Many of them weren't even legible! When she found a friendly Ethereal fellow lighting another fire, she felt quite sympathetic.

Thankfully, that was just about the end of this ridiculous library. Next up was a quick detour to the observatory!

Don't let the perspective fool you--that's quite the telescope there. Nola couldn't even reach the eyepiece!

Onward to the game room...

Quite the chess board, eh? Nola didn't seem to fit in with those orcs, and despite her encouragement, the footmen wouldn't budge an inch. This chess board wasn't quite what it was cracked up to be.

Beyond the chess room was the entrance to the chambers of Medivh himself.

Seems like some sort of whacked-out wizard sauna. Nola tried to relax, but she could swear one of those statues was looking at her. Anyway, if you're wondering who designed this place, check out the next room:

This is probably where Medivh and his wizard buddies go to get high. That explains so much...

Next, a quick pit stop at a rather large bed.

And finally, we've made it to the top of the tower!

Check out the dragon in the distance. Neat, eh?

You might think that this is it, but apparently Medivh figured out how to add on a whole lot of extra real estate to the top of this place. Need more square footage to sell the place? No problemo!

Whoa. Now that's spacious!

Looks like this is the end of the line, though, so there's only one thing left for Nola to do... Strip down to the tabard and leap to her death in the library! Goodbye, cruel world!

So ends another chapter in Nola's exploration of Karazhan. Tragic! Next time, though, next time...

A Warlock's Dilemma

In instances, minion choice is generally situational. Felguard or voidwalker for off-tanking, imp for +stamina and fire shield, succubus for crowd control, felhound for...something.

But what's the best choice for general questiness? For 30 levels, I've run with a Felguard. I love him. I attempt to keep him alive in instances. He looks really cool. But is he better than the voidwalker for general running around? For 30 levels I thought i knew the answer. Now i'm not so sure.

For those of you who are more baseball statistics-minded (read: not me) here's the stat breakdown for a lvl 70 warlock, 42 Demonology, 19 Affliction.

----	Voidwalker	Felguard
Health	7014	5010
Mana	4658	4127
Str	153	153
Agi	108	108
Stm	457	457
Int	326	280
Spr	122	122
Power	634	630
Damage	139-171	228-282
Spell Bonus	+91	+90
Armor	9384	8503
---	reduces	reduces
---	damage 47%	damage 43%

Felguard does have Cleave and Charge and a better taunt than the voidwalker. Voidwalker has Consume Shadows and sacrifice. When i run with the blueberry, it seems like he dies more, but that might just be an impression.

I don't really play by statistics because I've always suspected they don't give you the whole picture. Looking at the stats for Felguard vs. Voidwalker, it seems that the voidwalker is the better choice. But is it? Am I missing something? I think so. But what?

open letter

Dear Mr. Devilsaur,

Please stop killing me and my pet every time I set foot in Un'Goro Crater. Failure to do so will result in severe repercussions from some powerful and hate-filled gnomes.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Tacostalker

375 Drinking

I decided to start my own booze blog instead of clogging this one with my off-topic posts. sorry to anyone who was annoyed. You can find this one (and more to come!) at 375 Drinking!

look for more posts at Darkmoon Special Reserve