Tag Archive: Cataclysm


wow cataclysm path of the titans

Here’s all the information you need to know about Path of the Titans before the WoW Expansion comes out later this year.
WoW Cataclysm Path of the Titans

As you will have read in our last article WoW Cataclysm Archaeology, there will be a new secondary profession in Azeroth when the new expansion comes out. This profession will allow all players to find and uncover secrets which have been unearthed after the cataclysmic event which has destroyed much of Azeroth.

The glyphs that will be created by players, as well as the discoveries that they will uncover will eventually lead to them beginning a questline which, at level 85 (max level), will mean that every player will be able to customize his player’s history and style more and more. But what are these questlines? They are the Path of the Titans!

Each quest line or Path will lead to a number of quests and tasks for players. These paths the quests in WoW Cataclysm can unlock not only items and rewards, but also changes to your skills and talents. It will be a fully fledged top-level customization process, and everyone will be able to choose to be different. It is Blizzard’s plan that there will be fewer and fewer ‘clone’ builds between the same class in WoW Cataclysm, and more and more individuality and expressionism.

Each of the paths has an interesting name, which I will list here simply for information’s sake. The path of the titans lore will be very interesting to follow, as each path will be linked to a different hero! These heroes are:

Aman’Thul: The High Father , Golganneth: The Thunderer, Eonar: The Lifebinder, , Aggramar: The Avenger, Khaz’Goroth: The Shaper and Norgannon: The Dreamweaver. We can only imagine the different possibilities which each Path of Titans will open for players of Warcraft, and each class and race will be able to analyse and choose their own story related to their strengths, racials and desires.

That’s all the Path of the Titans in WoW Cataclysm info we have right now, but keep checking back (or RSS us) for more info as it comes out!

Burning with desire to slip into the Cataclysm beta test, grab a goblin or worgen and run wild? Not these players. We asked readers to tell us why they do or do not want to participate in Cataclysm beta testing — and while plenty affirmed their beta aspirations with desperately ardent pleas, we found ourselves more intrigued by the reasoning of those who said they weren’t interested. Why would they pass up this opportunity of a gaming lifetime? What could they possibly hope to be doing for fun, instead? Read on to hear the opinions of three players on why, when it comes to Cataclysm beta testing, they will be opting out.

Using beta to create buzz

Beta tests are like a shiny, seductive piece of candy left in a painfully conspicuous place. Once we become aware that it exists, our desire for it almost overwhelms our good senses. We run in circles trying to find someone with a spare beta key, an easily winnable contest, or if we’re truly desperate, we hit eBay. Beta tests, like that piece of candy, are so tempting that we fail to ask important questions like “Why does this exist?” or “Why is there a box with a string attached over this?”

Why it’s there is simple enough. Blizzard, like many video game developers, seems to have realized the utility and liability inherent in beta testing. If they provide their beta testers with a noticeably glitchy or broken build, word will get out that the new expansion is terrible, broken, unplayable or worse. Small problems become magnified in the buzz, and one bad beta test can potentially sink an otherwise promising release. However, if the developers give their testers a well designed, fully functioning build of the game, then what’s being tested? That’s where the strings come in.

In the twenty-first century, a video game beta test is less an actual test than an interactive publicity stunt. Remember the Wrath beta and the fantastic stories you heard from the first of your friends to get in? And how near the end it felt like everyone but you had a key? What modern beta testers see is a mostly complete version of the final build. These testers aren’t so much testing as they are marveling, oohing and aahing and providing fuel for gamer gossip and the gaming media.

The only real testing beta testers do comes towards the end of the beta cycle: the dreaded stress test phase. This is when beta invites start going out en masse, seeming to blacken the skies of the internet with their multitudes. For a tester who thus far has been nothing but wowed and intrigued by the polished product they’ve been experiencing, stress tests are nothing but a teeth-clenching nightmare. Imagine the launch night of a major expansion, only worse. You’ll disconnect. NPCs will behave erratically. You’ll enter the very instance you’re trying to stress test, only to find yourself somewhere under the Stonetalon Mountains with no way back to the raid. These tests generate some of the most important data for developers but are nothing short of torturous for testers who have no bugs to report that aren’t already being reported by the 6,000 other players experiencing them simultaneously.

Of course, it does get worse. After all your fun of running around in new content and then the agony of stress tests, the game launches, your beta character gets deleted and you no longer possess any mystical new knowledge of the expansion that anyone who reads WoW.com and has access to Wowhead doesn’t already have.

Still, that candy does look enticing, doesn’t it? — G. Chad Peters

Devouring the facts, savoring the experience

My name is Casey Monroe, but some of you may recognize me as Malgayne from Wowhead.com. When WoW.com sent out their call to arms for submissions on the topic of beta participation a few days back, I jumped at the chance — after all, it was a topic that I had been hoping to post about on our own blog for some time.

I’m in sort of a unique position to answer this question, because in fact I’ve been in every beta since The Burning Crusade — whether I wanted to be or not. I’m lucky enough to have managing the content on Wowhead as my full-time job, which means that even if I didn’t love WoW, I’d still be in there, learning as much as I could about the new material.

But if I had to choose … now that’s a good question.

I’m at best a casual raider. I was head of a guild in BC that raided Karazhan, and that was about it. We eventually dissolved into a larger guild, which enabled me to see SSC a few times. In Wrath, my performance was even more shameful — I’ve been in Naxx and ToC, but that’s about all. I have a ton of alts, and I flit between too many different games at a time to really perfect a single character; I suppose I just have a short attention span. I’m by no means a hardcore WoW player, so the appeal of beta testing cutting-edge, new content has always been lost on me. So that’s out.

But the other aspect of all this is the fact that I’m an authoritarian. I like to play by the rules. And when I’m experiencing the content that the Blizzard team has laid out for me, I like to experience the content in the manner they intended.

With a game like WoW, this is remarkably difficult. There’s no clear, single path through the game, after all. If you skip a quest, you might be breaking an important chain … but if you don’t skip any quests, then you’re going to be over-leveled for the content, which also alters the experience. Sometimes I would find myself saving up XP and then skipping entire zones — and that doesn’t even get into the issue of trying to fit instancing in there (a topic which I talked about some time ago in another editorial).

So with all these things in mind, well, no … I don’t think I would choose to be in the beta if I didn’t have to be. I like to understand all about the new systems in advance, to be sure — what the stats mean, what the new abilities do, how the new emblems are going to work. But the quests, the story, the flavor … all these are things I want to experience, not as a sneak peek or a leak or a preview but as a game. — Casey Monroe

What I’ll be doing instead

I will not be playing the beta. In my four years of World of Warcraft addiction, I have never once felt the impulse to set my virtual foot inside any beta content, and I have still managed to level and raid and navigate new zones perfectly fine without it. Granted, I am aware that I owe my ease of discovery to the convenience of Wow.com and other informative websites, and thus indirectly to the hard work and diligent reporting of thousands of beta testers worldwide. To those tireless folk: I salute you. Thank you for your willingness to report bugs, endure unfinished landscapes and sacrifice months of work on a ‘toon, only to start again at launch with the rest of us.

However, if you think that just because I didn’t opt in for beta I’ll be lounging on a beach with a mojito until Cataclysm is released, you’re wrong. In fact, I will be spending my limited hours in WoW working very hard — and the gain to my character will be permanent. Here is what I will be doing during the beta period:

* Saying goodbye to four years of memories in the old world zones. Flying over Stranglethorn Vale for the first time in the zeppelin, seeing unexpected lushness … Standing as a ghost in Silithus, in awe of the gates of AQ opening event … Ganking and being ganked at the docks of Auberdine … Even as the expansions sent me farther away from Azeroth, I knew I could always come back for the strong feelings of nostalgia I knew I could get when I entered Ashenvale or Eastern Plaguelands. Alas, these places will never be the same.

* Finishing up endangered achievements and grinding endangered items. Though we have no official confirmation of which ones will be removed or sent to Feat-of-Strength Land, I am not going to take a chance on missing out on achievements and items I’ve been meaning to get for so long. I will be finishing Loremaster and trying to get Baron Rivendare’s mount, the ZG mounts, the Ravasaur pets and the epic recipe for Dirge’s Kickin’ Chimeric Chops.

* Saving gold. If two expansions have taught me anything, it’s that it really helps to have a gold buffer. (Knowing Blizzard, they’ll charge us a bundle to be able to fly in Azeroth.)

* Working on my PVP gear set. With the advent of rated battlegrounds awarding arena points, I might actually be able to buy gear that’s competitive in both battlegrounds and casual arena. I’m really looking forward to the new PvP system.

* Warning players of the cataclysm to come. I’ll be the one with the REPENT, THE END IS NEAR sandwich board in a city near you.

My not-so-gentle Spiritual Guidance readers, I have a confession to make. I’m filled with hate.

I hate cats. I hate Hummel figurines. I hate trifling gnome Wilfred Fizzlebang. I hate the taste of whatever brand ketchup they use at McDonalds. Lots and lots of hate. Oh, if only there were a way to channel this magnificent … shadowy hatepower.

Ask and ye shall receive, my brethren! Not from me, mind you — from Blizzard. (I mostly just give out shadow priesting knowledge with the occasional nod to pop culture.) This week, Spiritual Guidance is tackling the changes to the shadow priest spec that currently exist within the Cataclysm alpha. If you’re adamant on being surprised and don’t want anything spoiled, I recommend you stop reading now and instead invest your time in the following YouTube video. I feel it provides a respectable alternative.

But if you want to take your loathing for the formulaic CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men and channel it into a spiritual agent of death, and you just can’t wait until later this year to find out how … follow me past the break.

A ghostly aspect of our shadowy hatepower

For all the bitching and moaning that we do sometimes, shadow priest damage is actually pretty respectable right now. I definitely want that damage-dealing ability to keep pace in Cataclysm. But besides that, the main thing I want is a new ability or talent that makes me sit up and take notice. We don’t know if it’ll last through past the alpha or beta stages, but I think we finally have one: Shadowy Apparition. It takes the place of Misery on our talent tree.

Shadowy Apparition

While moving or dealing damage with Shadow Word: Pain, you will sometimes summon a Shadow version of yourself which will slowly move towards a target which is afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain. Once reaching that target, it will instantly deal damage equal to 15/30/45% of your Mind Blasts’ damage.

Commenter Hollow Leviathan describes the talent as “a ghostly aspect of your shadowy hatepower” that “consume(s) the life energy of your opponents.” In other words: awesome.

Aside from the visual appeal, the talent would insert a few new variables into the game for shadow priests. First, it appears that the damage we do would now be (at least slightly) contingent on how far we are from our target. This is something new for us — our current spells don’t require travel time the way a shaman’s Lightning Bolt does, for example.

Also interesting is the “while moving” part of the tooltip. How movement will factor into the talent, I’m not so sure, but if it provides a net benefit on a movement-heavy fight, I’m all for it. It also puts a little bit more power and interest behind Shadow Word: Pain, which became a somewhat forgettable and weak background DoT in Wrath.

I wasn’t entirely thrilled that Misery was being removed from the Shadow tree, but they exceeded expectations with this one. I hope it makes it to the live servers. Even if it’s not some kind of massive damage meter-breaking ability, it’d be nice to have another Fox Van Allen around the house, even if he doesn’t do much aside from blowing people up.

The ever-changing hit rating and hope for the off-spec

We already know that major changes are coming to hit ratings in Cataclysm. In March, we learned about Blizzard’s plans to let shaman convert spirit to hit as a deep-tree talent. This past week we learned that, if the new tooltip for Twisted Faith is any indication, shadow priests are getting the same treatment.

Twisted Faith

Increases your spell power by 20% of your total Spirit, and Your damage done by your Mind Flay and Mind Blast is increased by 2/4/6/8/10% if your target is afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain, and increases your spell hit rating by an additional amount equal to 4/8/12/16/20% of your Spirit.

First off, this should be great news for those lost souls who wander aimlessly in the light — their conversion to the dark side is that much easier. Healing gear doesn’t have hit on it? No problem — your shadow tree has you (at least partially) covered.

Another piece of good news: So long as that talent remains in place, those of us who still have spirit in our gear can breathe easy when Cataclysm hits. Ideally, we’ll be going into our first level 85 raid with gear from the new expansion, but we won’t be helpless if we quest and run dungeons in old Wrath gear that’s itemized for healers.

Here’s where things get a bit sketchy, though: Spirit Tap and Improved Spirit Tap still exist in the shadow tree unchanged. This means there are two possible scenarios: (1) Blizzard is setting the hit cap high enough that they don’t expect us to reach it through gear alone, making the concept of a hit rating that fluctuates with time acceptable, or (2) the Spirit Tap talents are in line for a makeover.

Frankly, the second scenario strikes me as the most likely. When the changes for Cataclysm were first announced, I hypothesized that Spirit Tap would be changed to a straight mana regen talent, and I still think that will be preferred by designers over a wildly fluctuating hit rating for shadow priests. Still, you can’t quite rule out a new approach to hit. We’re already used to spellpower, crit and haste fluctuating with time, so perhaps it’s not unreasonable to expect hit rating to fluctuate too.

More about Shadow Orbs and mastery

There’s a little shuffling going on in the talent tree, and Shadow Focus was a casualty, as expected. To make up for its absence, you can get Shadow Weaving sooner (now level 15). I like that change, because it gives Shadow even more of an early boost over the holy tree as far as dealing damage is concerned. (Don’t tell anyone — especially Dawn — but as a low-level, Wrath-era leveling priest, I’d be sorely tempted to grab Searing Light and Divine Fury.)

So, we need to put a new talent in our tree to make up the gap. Here’s what we’re getting:

Empowered Shadow Orbs

Increases the damage done by your shadow orbs by 2/4/6% and you have an h% chance to gain a Shadow Orb when critically hit by any attack.

Alright, that’s not very exciting. We knew we were getting Shadow Orbs. But a quick look at the tooltip hints that we’ve finally got a “first draft” of what these new spheres of doom will do — flat damage. Digging deeper, a datamined tooltip sheds some more light on the darkness, so to speak:

Shadow Orb

The priest is surrounded by Shadow Orbs, stacking up to 0 times. When the priest casts Mind Blast or Mind Spike, all Shadow Orbs are consumed, each increasing the spell damage done.

What does this tell us? While I doubt Blizzard is done playing around with the concept of Shadow Orbs (and further, the zero is obviously a placeholder), they’ve at least settled on an initial mechanism of what looks to be burst-type damage. That’s no surprise — burst damage seems to be a priority in the Cataclysm design of the shadow priest class. Don’t like it? Blame PvPers.

There’s one last tidbit of information about our new mastery mechanic that’s now known — where these orbs come from. The unearthed the shadow priest mastery tooltip reads:

Increases all spell damage done by a percentage.

Increases your spell critical strike chance by a percentage.

Gives a chance for your Shadow Word: Pain and Mind Flay spells to grant you a Shadow Orb each time they deal damage. Also increases the damage bonus to Mind Flay and Mind Spike granted by Shadow Orbs by a percentage.

The important stuff is at the end, of course. In the alpha build, we generate Shadow Orbs through our normal DPS activities — SW:P and Mind Flay. There’s something a little boring about that. It’s not really a neat new mechanic so much as it is something we won’t even notice. Orbs get generated during our normal rotation. Orbs get consumed during our normal rotation. Nothing changes except for a small boost of damage here and there. Maybe we’ll have to duel before raid bosses to build up orbs the way warlocks duel to build up Soul Shards.

A small boost of damage that’s going to be balanced and put on even level with the damage output of all the other hybrid classes. Yawn.

Mind Spike: A terrible threat

Finally, let’s take a look at what mysteries have been uncovered in our new offensive spell, Mind Spike.

Mind Spike

Blasts the target for 992 to 1048 Shadowfrost damage, and causes 31% of the damage up to 2182 to be frozen in the target’s mind for 12 sec. Mind Blast on the target will trigger any frozen damage instantly. The trigger effect causes a high amount of threat.

At first, I had figured that Mind Spike would be unspammable due to a high mana cost, though that’s not necessarily the case — its cost is “only” 17% of your base mana. Instead, we’ll be prevented from spamming Mind Spike via the threat meters. That’s fine in theory, but we’d be prevented from using burst damage on newly spawned adds in instances and raids, which may limit its usefulness. We’ll have to see how this one works on the live servers.

That sick spike in damage when that subsequent Mind Blast hits, unleashing the frozen damage and consuming a shadow orb … that’s going to be awesome. I love big, five-digit numbers.

Overall, the alpha has a definite hit in Shadowy Apparition (so far as I’m concerned) and a miss when it comes to Shadow Orbs. That’s fine — we’re looking at the first draft here, so to speak. Still, I’m getting more and more excited for what’s coming down the road. So bring it on, Two and a Half Men — we could all use that extra hatepower for Cataclysm.

Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast.

Back at the beginning of April, we were treated to the Cataclysm preview for all of the classes. Many people were excited, some were disappointed, but everyone had news to digest. This past week has seen the Cataclysm friends and family alpha start and since then, we have seen a plethora of leaks: everything from images of the changes to old zones and new instances up to some data-mined information about female worgen. Needless to say, it has been a pretty busy week.

This last week has also seen a lot of discussion about the leaked talent trees as they are in the alpha now. I thought now would be a good time to take a break from boss talks to talk about what we know so far about the shaman talent trees and maybe find out your opinions on them as well.

The information in the link above is leaked and is in no way official. If you are waiting for an official release or don’t want to see any potential spoilers, don’t click the link. Otherwise let us take a look at some of the potential changes.

When I first looked at the leaked restoration talent tree, I was a bit surprised. I had expected more restructuring and more changes than we we currently see. As with everything though, this will be subject to change. This is leaked information, it may not be 100% accurate and even if it is, we are still in an alpha phase. Things will change, and until Blizzard says that things are final and presents them to us, it is best to keep an open mind when looking at the information.

What we know so far

* Some of the talents have been moved around.

* Tidal Mastery has been removed.

* Thundering Strikes has been removed.

* Cleanse Spirit has been removed as a talent. The talent is now Improved Cleanse Spirit and allows for the removal of magic effects from friendly targets.

* Ancestral Knowledge has been changed. Instead of increasing intellect by 10% at max rank, it now increases maximum mana by 15%.

In place of Tidal Mastery, a new talent has popped up, Focused Insight.

Focused Insight

Rank 5/5

Requires 15 points in Restoration talents

After casting any shock spell, your next heal’s mana cost is reduced by 75% of the cost of the shock spell, and its healing effectiveness is increased by 25%

An interesting replacement for what used to be 5% crit rating. A few people have commented to me that they think this is purely a PvP talent. Looking at it though, I can’t help but see the potential for PvE. As it stands now, Riptide increases the healing effectiveness of Chain Heal by 25% when it is cast on the a player with Riptide on them. One would assume that these could potentially stack, allowing for even larger chain heals, but also this can be used for larger Healing Waves and, in Cataclysm, larger Greater Healing Wave. I can also see this talent playing very nicely with Tidal Force, and even Shamanistic Focus could begin finding its way into talent specs. The other part of it that really interests me is the mana reduction component. While it is true that in order to activate the talent you have to cast a shock of some kind, it could still potentially be useful. Think of some of the fights now like Festergut where you can find yourself placing a Flame Shock on the boss as you run in. This can help you recover some of the mana spent placing the DoT on the target. It also was not so long ago when we had boss fights in which we had to interrupt abilities with shocks as well, and that may see a comeback. Keep in mind, Blizzard has stated they wanted to make mana more of a commodity, and something like this can go a long way to help in fights where you are forced to do something else and could potentially have an impact on 5-man content for us as well.

Another new addition to the restoration toolbox is Ancestral Resolve.

Ancestral Resolve

Rank 2/2

Requires 25 points in Restoration talents

Reduces damage taken while casting spells by 10%

People have told me that this one feels like a purely PvP talent as well, but again, I can see the potential for PvE here. There are a lot of fights where there is a ton of environmental damage going around in both raids and heroics. Reducing the damage we take can be quite helpful for a few reasons. Taking damage forces us to focus on our own health as much as the group we are healing. While it should not be the case, diverting our attention from our healing targets even momentarily can sometimes result in their deaths. A lot of healers also suffer from tunnel vision. Sometimes we become so focused on the fight or our healing targets that we do not pay enough attention to our own health. Giving us a few more seconds to keep healing our targets or to realize we are dangerously close to killing ourselves can go a long way. Think of how useful this would be in a fight like Sindragosa, where you may find yourself standing in harm’s way to heal tanks. We already have Healing Focus to help reduce pushback from damage; having another ability that passively helps us heal while taking damage could be quite helpful.

So far, we have not seen any mention of talents that help augment the newly renamed Greater Healing Wave or Healing Rains. There has also been no mention of Spirit Link in the talents. Blizzard had previously mentioned a desire to bring Spirit Link back, but has not yet specified in what capacity they were going to try it.

Speculation

While it is true that this is still early information at best, I suspect we are going to see a few things happen from here. First, I think that there will be actual consolidation within the tree. Currently, many of the talents we have already come to know and love are still there. They have stated that they want to add more fun, flavorful talents to the tree and fewer must-have talents, but as it stands right now, I am still seeing a lot of must-haves. With the importance of mana conservation, I am also wondering if we will see more talents changed to include some form of mana conservation or reduction in mana cost for spells.

I find the removal of 10% crit from talents falls in line with what Blizzard has said about reducing the overall healing numbers. They want it to feel more interesting and hectic in some ways. Reducing the amount of crit available to us from talents will play into this by reducing our overall healing output. This also affects any of our talents such as Ancestral Healing and Ancestral Awakening that directly benefit from a higher crit rating. Later in the expansion we may see this loss of crit compensated for with gear, but that is yet to be addressed.

So what do you think so far? What type of talents would you like to see Blizzard add to the restoration tree? What talents would you like to see them remove or consolidate? As more information becomes available, we will keep you posted and up to date. Remember to check back often.

Guilds who’ve been slower making the climb are having a harder and harder time finding raiders willing to commit to the final stretch. Everyone’s worried how the expansion’s changes to raid drops and incentives are going to affect the guild’s motivation and team spirit. The community is holding its collective breath, waiting for Cataclysm

How is your guild holding itself together during this time of transition? Our website is looking for an article on how guilds can keep from disintegrating during this pre-expansion period of transition. We’re looking for thoughtful strategies and suggestions, between 500 and 1,000 words, on ways that guilds can successfully survive the period linking the end of Wrath with the launch of Cataclysm. What is your guild doing? What alternatives are working for other guilds and raiding groups? Preferably, you’re the GM or an officer of a guild or the leader of a regular raiding group (although we won’t discount submissions from other types of players). As with all guest post call-outs, only the best submission will be accepted.

Here’s what to do: read up about the Seed guest writer program, sign up and then submit your article (you can’t see the article page unless you have a Seed account). Unfortunately, we are currently only able to take submissions from individuals living in the United States; we hope to be able to accept international submissions in the future.

Foxlight is now even more aptly named, now that you have chosen holy for his talent tree. You also voted for jewelcrafting/mining, so he will be making pretty, sparkly things. But, while most of you find Fox Van Allen’s shirtless pally fabulous, you’re really here to vote on the class and race of WoW.com’s prom queen, Christian Belt. You’ll also get to vote on the questing zone for next week, if you so choose. But first, the schedule:

* Matthew Rossi as Andrenorton, his new troll mage: Some time Saturday
* Fox Van Allen as Foxlight, the blood elf paladin: Saturday, 8 p.m. EDT
* Amy Schley as Patent, the troll rogue, Adam Holisky as Adammentat, the tauren druid, and Gregg Reece, the orc warlock, will be making appearances as they can.

The polls are after the break.

We’ve been questing all over Stonetalon Mountains for the week. Should we move to another quest area? I have listed our other zone choices in order of how much of a change they are likely to go through in Cataclysm, from most to least.