The Sons of Hodir

·                                 There are two shoulder enchants of interest to warriors, with two tiers between them. The Greater and Lesser Inscriptions of the Pinnacle and the Greater and Lesser Inscriptions of the Axe. Clearly, tanking warriors are going to want Sons of Hodir reputation as fast as they can get it, while the lack of hit on the Axe inscriptions means that they are less less important for DPSing warriors (again, Arms and the Impale/Rampage/Incite build will be less invested in hit rating). You’ll still get them, of course, as there is currently no alternative shoulder enchant available, although this could clearly change.

·                                 Stalactite Chopper is an interesting option for a tank or DPS warrior. The speed and stats would certainly make it a good DPS option, but stam and a good amount of damage on Devastates (especially now that Devastate has been reverted to 50% of weapon damage) means that you might want to carry this around and switch in and out to lay five of them on with it before you get better.

·                                 Spaulders of the Giant Lord are also interesting. Sadly lacking in hit, they have good strength and crit but continue the trend of high stam on DPS plate that attempts to push warriors in a direction that doesn’t really seem to make a lot of sense. If for some reason you were defense capped, or just wanted good threat pieces, they’d be okay for a tanking warrior but they’re sub-par for anyone, really, be it arms, fury or a hybrid build. Still, when you hit 80 you probably don’t have much better.

Wrath CE sold out at Gamestop, Amazon

Gamestop employees got a memo yesterday that preorders of the Wrath of the Lich King Collector’s Edition may have reached their limit, and we’ve just called and confirmed that — the Collector’s Edition is sold out already at Gamestop. Looks like Amazon also has also taken down their preorders, instead offering a signup to be notified “when this item becomes available.” The thing has only been on sale for two days, and already it seems many retails have run out of their listed units — in fact, Gamestop told their employees that they may not even have been able to fulfill all the orders taken so far.

Of course, we’re still talking preorders here — just because they got reserved doesn’t mean that they’ll all be sold, so there’s still a chance that you could get one at release (Gamestop, we believe, will hold reserves for 24-48 hours after release, and then sell them first-come, first-serve). And there’s a chance that Blizzard could put a larger order in (since the game hasn’t gone gold yet, the sets aren’t even manufactured yet), which would mean more preorders would be available.

But on the other hand, Blizzard has always wanted the Collector’s Editions to be limited, and the guys at Gamestop assured us that there were still plenty of regular copies to reserve. It’s hard to believe the CE could be completely sold out in just two days, two months ahead of the actual release, but it’s clear that Wrath is going to be one of Blizzard’s biggest releases ever.

Update: And now, for some reason, it looks like preorders are back up. Either Blizzard decided to make more or Gamestop figured out how they could sell more, so if you want to get one, better order it quick.

Ask a Beta Tester: Professions and gems

We’ll start out today with a simple enchanting question from WarwolfSwe, who asked….

Is there and new rod for enchanting? And do i need to upgrade the standard Runed Adamantite Rod to a Runed Eternium Rod?

There is now a Runed Eternium Rod you can craft at 375 skill. And, yes, it does require a Runed Adamanite Rod to craft (though the other materials — Greater Planar Essence and Primal Might may be placeholders, as they seem pretty old world-y).

For more of your beta questions — and our beta answers — read on! But if you’re the sort who wants to avoid spoilers, turn back now. We’re aiming to avoid major story spoilers, but this feature is all about beta content and we can’t talk about the beta without giving a few things away.

actodd asked….

Will Northrend have gem vendors like Outland does — selling low end gems? If so, how do these gems compare to ones currently in game? How do the basic Northrend JC gems compare?

I haven’t run into any gem vendors in Northrend, but green quality gem cuts in Northrend are superior to both blue and purple quality Outland gems. For example, the green quality Northrend stamina gem, Solid Chalcedony is 18 stamina. (And yes, cutting one of these will be as simple as finding one in the nearest ore vein to the boat or zeppelin to Northrend.) The epic equivalent in the current game, the Solid Empyrean Sapphire is only 15 stamina.

It is also worth noting that green quality gems can be cut “perfectly.” A simple quest gives you the ability Gem Perfection which gives you a chance to cut green quality gems into “perfect” variations of the same, which have better stats. For example, a Balanced Shadow Crystal will give 12 AP and 9 stamina while a Perfect Balanced Shadow Crystal will give 14 AP and 11 stamina. (And the perfect version of the Solid Chalcedony mentioned above? 21 stamina.)

RogueJedi86 asked….

As an extension of that, will there be basic glyph vendors? Because otherwise, it’ll suck to have to go to players every time we want a glyph. Unlike Jewelcrafting, we’ll have a big old Glyph tab in our spellbook from the first level we get a Glyph. Without basic Glyphs on a vendor, Scribes will be pushed a little too hard, harder than JC was with BC.

Again, haven’t seen one yet. However, I think it’s likely that the market will be fairly well flooded with Glyphs as countless people start leveling up Inscription — just like the market was flooded with with gems after Burning Crusade’s release. And after Wrath’s launch, it’ll be all supply and demand. If people want certain Glyphs, there should be plenty of people happy to provide them.

Connor asked….

Do I get a seventh Glyph slot with lvl 1 inscription? I know it’s not uncommon for max-level characters to drop their gathering profession for another crafting one. For me, the cost of leveling the profession wasn’t worth the BoPs at the end but all I’ve heard is “seven if you’ve taken Inscription yourself.” Seems like a no-brainer to drop my mining once I get my BS maxed and pick up a free glyph-slot. The only way I don’t see that working out is if the 7th-glyphs are BoP or something….

Right now that mysterious seventh Glyph isn’t in the game, at any skill level — so where it shows up is anyone’s guess. However, as to the trade-off between a seventh Glyph, as all of your gathering professions now have some sort of buff associated with them. Miners get Toughness, a stamina boost. Skinners get Master of Anatomy, a critical strike boost. Herbalists get Wild Growth, a heal over time. Are these worth losing an extra Glyph slot? That one’s up to you.

Meethan asked….

What does Murder Spree do now? Is it still borked as a Rhino’s growl?

In the latest beta build, it seems to be working as advertised, making multiple attacks on multiple targets within its 10 yard range. (Since people have asked previously, I’ll clear this part up right now: if you only have one target in range, using Murder Spree will attacks them multiple times.)

Warlock changes in Beta build 8926

The nerf bat swung low and hard. Did it hit Warlocks? Well… yes and no. This is the stage in Beta where things are tuned downwards — notoriously labeled the nerf patch — and Warlocks are big, fat nerf targets. On the other hand, some spells got buffs and others were reworked. This is just Beta, so don’t panic. Classes are buffed and nerfed throughout the testing process until everything is finely tuned.

Without further ado: they nerfed Death’s Embrace to grant 9% crit to all Shadow Spells when an opponent is at 20% or below health, down from 15% crit. Eradication can no longer be a permanent buff now as it now notes that, “This effect cannot occur more often than once every 30 sec”. On the other hand, Death’s Embrace and Eradication got cool new icons. Dark Pact, which I raved about when I talked about the Felhunter, has been nerfed back to its current form of granting 100% of the mana drained from pet (down from 200% in previous builds).

Curse of Exhaustion was nerfed to a 30% movement speed reduction, down from 50%. It’s now back to the live realm’s value but without the benefit of Amplify Curse, which was reworked in Beta. Fel Armor’s mana regeneration was removed and replaced with a health regeneration rate of 2% per 5 seconds. I’m not too sure how to feel about that, but since Warlocks treat health as mana, anyway, it’s not such a substantial nerf but merely a mechanical change. More nerfs and a few pleasant surprises after the jump.

Demonic Empathy on Destruction Tier 9 has been nerfed to a 3% bonus, down from 6%, but gets a pretty new icon. I discussed the Metamorphosis changes in a previous post, but forgot to mention that the cooldown has been increased to 5 minutes. Think of the demon form as an uh-oh button rather than a Moonkin or Shadowform and you’ll appreciate it better. It also has a new icon, no longer using Illidan’s face. Demonic Sacrifice has been nerfed slightly to grant a 7% bonus to Shadow and Fire damage, down from 10%.

The Destruction tree is finally completely accessible, with Chaos Bolt and Fire and Brimstone finally in the game, with new icons to boot. The funny part? Chaos Bolt was nerfed even before it got tested, with damage reduced from 1012-1278 to 990-1256. Fire and Brimstone was nerfed, too, to keep Chaos Bolt company, granting 15% of spell power bonus to Immolate, down from 25%. Still an underwhelming 45-50 point talent if you ask me, but hey, test it, anyway. Empowered Imp has been made less powerful as procs now grant a mere 20% crit bonus as opposed to 100% — I think we should’ve seen that one coming since Destruction was dealing ludicrous damage through crits thanks to cooperative Imps.

Improved Soul Leech was retuned to work in a similar fashion to other mana regeneration mechanics by not scaling with damage dealt but instead return a flat percentage, in this case 2%, of maximum mana. Emberstorm was nerfed to reduce Incinerate cast time by .25 seconds instead of .5 previously. This actually puts it back in line with the old Emberstorm, which conferred a 10% increase to Incinerate’s casting time. And finally, Cataclysm was nerfed to reduce the cost of Destruction spells by up to 3%, down from 6%.

Whew. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Now for a bit of good news. Unstable Affliction’s silence effect was reverted to its original 5 seconds, up from 3, which is cool but it’s still down to a 15 second duration with a cast time. So it’s not quite a buff, but definitely not a nerf. Improved Felhunter now increases the effect of Fel Intelligence by up to 10%, which still doesn’t match Arcane Brilliance and Divine Spirit but is an awesome change nonetheless. I mean, I can’t have my little Rhuunom make Mages and Priests lose their raid spots, you know? The tooltip for Demonic Empowerment now includes the proper durations and Shadowfury is now, at long last, instant cast. That .5 second cast was always very strange, but now it works the way the Demons intended. Then there’s one last thing:

Shadow Embrace
Requires 20 points in Affliction
Your Shadow Bolt and Haunt spells apply the Shadow Embrace effect, increasing all periodic damage dealt to the target by you by 5%, and reduces all periodic healing done to the target by 15%. Lasts for 12 sec. Stacks up to 2 times.
This talent was reworked to proc off Shadow Bolt and Haunt instead of DoTs, which forces Affliction Warlocks to toss up their spell cycles a bit. The tooltips are bugged, but in a nutshell the total damage increase is a substantial 10% with 2 stacks and the healing debuff is at 30%. This version of the spell is worlds better than the one on live, and the inclusion of Haunt as a trigger only incentivizes going deeper into the Affliction tree. Mechanically a nerf, if only because DoTs are easier to apply. Otherwise, still an amazing talent.

So there we have it. Warlocks in Beta build 8926, aka The Nerf Build. Don’t worry too much about the nerfs, as most of them are simply for testing purposes and will — if found to be too weak — be re-tuned to the proper numbers and scaling when the time comes. In fact, if I mention the new icons, it only means that the devs are just about ready to give the class some real work. Look out for more, and better, changes in future builds. Right now, it should be a good time to try out Destruction now and see Chaos Bolt blow up pesky Priests and their shields.

15 Minutes of Fame: Around the world playing World of Warcraft

Posted Sep 2nd 2008 2:00PM by Lisa Poisso

Filed under: Features, Interviews, 15 Minutes of Fame

15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes ¨C from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you’d like to hear more about.

If you’ve ever wanted to quit your job, travel the world and play WoW whenever and wherever you please ¨C take it from Caesar of US Dark Iron-H, it’s as good as you’d ever dreamed it could be. In March 2007, Caesar sold his house, put the rest of his belongings in storage and hit the road. Since then, he’s managed to keep his WoW account alive and has played on and off from his laptop and internet cafes all over the Pacific and Asia. So far, he’s logged in from two dozen different countries on almost every sort of network issue you could imagine.

We caught up with Caesar in Kuala Lumpur to see if his travels are turning out to be as cool in practice as the idea was on the drawing board. (TLDR version: They are.)

15 Minutes of Fame: So where are you this week?

Caesar: I’m in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Last week I was in Bintan, Indonesia and Singapore. Next week, I’ll be in Penang, Malaysia and maybe in Thailand, depending on how fast I move. (Editor’s note: Moments before this article was scheduled to go live, Caesar e-mailed to say he had just in fact added Thailand to the list of places from which he’s logged into WoW.)

This is a very fast rug

We’ve already talked about what was said in the latest Blizzcast: mainly profession details and music, as well as a few snippets on dungeons and raids from Kaplan (and some Starcraft II stuff). But there were some interesting pieces of information given away in an image linked on the podcast transcript page that were not discussed in the podcast, in the way of new crafted items. The image is replicated above; click for a bigger version. My favorite is definitely the Magnificent Flying Carpet. Yes, it’s a flying mount for tailors, and I am pretty certain that it will be awesome.

Here’s everything I found in that image that I don’t remember having seen elsewhere:

·                                 Magnificent Flying Carpet: Requires level 70, tailoring (450). Use: Calls forth and dismisses a flying carpet. This is a very fast rug. This mount can only be summoned in Outland and Northrend. Requires artisan riding skill or higher to use.

·                                 Floral Foundations: Encrypted, requires inscription (50). A small collection of rare herbs. [No, I have no idea what this is, aside from something to do with Inscription.]

·                                 Spring Loaded Cloak Expander: requires engineering (425). Use: permanently modifies a cloak so it can be activated by a skilled engineer, causing them to fall slowly for 10 sec. The effect can only be activated every 5 min.

This last item ties in to what Jon LeCraft (WoW’s lead profession designer) was saying about engineering having items to give effects to gear, as opposed to replacing gear outright like the Parachute Cloak. Engineered enchants, basically. Overall, I continue to be more and more excited about professions in Wrath