While I spent quite a bit of time building my Shaman Twink and came very close to the dreaded ding to 30, I did find a few mistakes made along the way. There are some rather rare boss drops that would have been nice to have based on things I learned about playing a Shaman […]
The Offical tooltip: Players cannot dodge, parry, or block attacks that come from behind them. Riddle me this: Zargan’s Armory
Filed under: Druid, Hunter, Mage, Shaman, Herbalism, Alchemy, Engineering, Tailoring, Enchanting, First Aid, Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Economy, Expansions, Features, Classes, Making money, Enchants, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King, Inscription, Achievements
We have a lot of profession questions today, but also a few about Achievements, the Beast Mastery 51-point talent, and what happens when you push Death Knights off a cliff:
Riley asks…
How is the Shaman Hex ability working? Does the target still have control of movement and does the PvP trinket work against it?
Hex is a the crowd-control spell for Shamans referenced by the devs at the class panel here, and it’s been tinkered with a lot since we first heard about it. It was originally meant to be more of an emergency-only, short-duration CC. In its present form, Hex’s duration has been increased to 30 seconds and it doesn’t necessarily break on damage. However, in PvP the target can control where they go, the PvP trinket does work (you can also shapeshift out of it as a Druid), and it’s considered a curse and can be dispelled by Mages, Druids, and restoration Shamans (who will have the ability do dispel curses with a 31-point talent Cleanse Spirit). Think of it as a somewhat odd combination of Counterspell, Fear, and Polymorph.
Continue reading Ask a Beta Tester: It’s all about the money
Filed under: Talents, BlizzCon, Rumors
In the midst of a mostly unrelated post about the Druid Balance tree, Ghostcrawler let slip the following: “The dual-spec feature will shine more light on talent design (more on that at Blizzcon) and we’ll have a better idea of what we want to do with trees when that goes live.” Now I don’t know about you all, but as someone who plays a healing class for a main, I am very interested in the dual spec idea. Knowing that we’ll get more information on it at Blizzcon, just a few days away, makes me a happy priest indeed.
But what could she mean by the dual-spec feature shining more light on talent design? It’s a slightly mysterious statement, but my interpretation is that when everybody can have two specs and switch between them either freely or at least cheaply, the load each spec needs to carry lessens. It’s OK if Holy can’t solo, because you can just switch to your Shadow spec for that. It’s not such a big deal if Combat isn’t as strong in PvP; just swap out to Assassination for the BG weekend, and swap back in time to raid. The trees no longer have to be strong in all areas of the game. But that’s just guesswork on my part; GC may well have meant something else entirely.
Either way, we’ll see in Anaheim this weekend, and WoW Insider will keep you posted with live reports.
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Filed under: Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King
38 days from now, Wrath of the Lich King will be released, and hundreds of thousands of people will be chomping at the bit to roll Death Knights, WoW‘s first new class. Blizzard knows this as well as anyone, so they’ve posted a FAQ on DK character creation. If you’ve been following the news for months, there is little new here, but it’s good as a recap, because these questions are, indeed, very frequently asked. So go on and brush up if you have questions about what races can be DKs (all of them), or whether you can make it the opposite faction of your existing characters (yes, unless you’re on a PvP server).
There is, though, one bit of news in this post. When Wrath launches, you will only be able to create a DK on a realm on which you have an existing character of level 55 or higher. Wryxian, that maverick crocolisk CM, promises that in the future, the option will be opened up to create a DK on any realm, provided you have at least one 55-or-higher character somewhere. The previous plan was to make this the rule at launch (55+ = DK on any realm).
The only reason I can think of that they would make this change is that they were having difficulties from a technical standpoint; maybe it’s non-trivial when trying to create a character on one realm to check that account’s characters on other realms. Anyway, I doubt this will affect anyone too much. I for one am certainly going to make a DK on my main realm before I branch out to realms that I don’t have any high-level characters on.
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Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Expansions, Buffs, Wrath of the Lich King
Both spells seem to be level 60 spells, strangely enough (Update: Because, I learned in the comments, the highest rank of Polymorph is obtained at level 60), so if your 60 Mage has 5000g just sitting around or has a rich alt willing to pay the price, you could be using them then. WoWWiki also says the prices are rep-related, so if you do a little grinding for the Kirin Tor, you might be able to pick them up for cheaper. And don’t forget that this is Wrath — 2500g is likely only a few days of dailies anyway. Polymorph on!
While my main character is an undead Holy Priest that is mostly a battleground healer, I did like having Fear Ward added along with Will of the Forsaken and a Trinket. While most battlegrounds are relatively quick, being immune to fear while healing a flag carrier or defender has been handy at times. While I […]
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Events, Blizzard, Wrath of the Lich King
Blizzard has named the last content patch before Wrath of the Lich King — it’s “Echoes of Doom.” They’ve created a page for patch 3.0.2 in their Under Development section, and all of the features we’ve become familiar with over the past few months — from Inscription to two new Arenas (no mention yet of the new battleground, unless they just meant Wintergrasp) and lots of UI modifications — are listed right there as ready to go in with the new patch.
The page still seems like a placeholder, though, so expect to see it changed over the next two weeks or so — we’ll see more detailed patch notes, of course, near release, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some information about the World Event that will likely kick off Wrath. “Echoes of Doom” — are you excited?
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