Project Lore

It's Nerf & Then Lots Of QQ Blizzard Poster Bornakk announced a new nerf to the engineering profession, although it is not the main focus of the nerf.  According to Bornakk, items with Stealth Detection were being used in unintended ways - way past their ilvl in many cases - in an effort to get an advantage, or equal footing, inside the Arenas.  Rather than try and rebalance the offending items, Blizzard has nerfed any and all items with a hint of stealth detection on them. If you have been participating in the Arenas while sporting anything but Ultra-Spectropic Detection Goggles or an engineering helm, then you will still posses some stealth detection.  The catch is that it isn't enough stealth detection to justify what you lose for equipping the item anymore.  The former item is no longer usable in Arenas, while the latter group has had their detection removed entirely, a choice that has engineers up in arms.  One passionate tinkerer exclaimed, "would you PLEASE just remove the profession."  And if you didn't hit the link up top, the changes have already been implemented.  A tooltip update is incoming as part of the next minor patch. My main is a rogue engineer so I am actually on both sides of the camp.  From a rogue standpoint, we are almost ecstatic because we can now sneak in for our openers with a lower chance of being seen.  Of course, rogue battles versus humans and their pesky passive stealth detection racial ability will still annoy us, especially rogue versus human rogue.  As an engineer, the nerf lowers the profession's utility further.  The helm that was crafted specifically for the Arena (or early raiding) is now useless with no inkling of an incoming buff to make up for its loss. I'm not going to go on a QQ rant over a single item though, especially since I don't Arena enough on Solidsamm to care.  Instead, I will QQ over the professions in general.  Let's not try to make professions all homogeneous like we did with raid buffing, as some players in the thread are suggesting.  In my opinion, each profession should offer their own special utility.  Blacksmiths can make their own gem slots, jewelcrafters have their rings, leatherworkers had their drums, etc. To me, engineering has always been about fun items, the Battle Chicken, the Harvest Reaper, the ROFLCopters.  We still have some of that but it's much less prevalent.  Wrath removed our collection of amusing gizmos and replaced them with recipes that are a requirement for all Arena engineers.  Essentially changing the role for an engineer from 'humorous accessory user' to that of a 'stealth detector.'  Now that role-changing item has been removed, and you wonder why we freak out?  You can't give someone candy and then take it away, not even if they get in your van. Which side are you on, or do you not PvP enough to care about the discussion one way or another?

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Everyone's favorite class designer hit the official forums during maintenance day to inform us that class changes for Patch 3.1 would be announced soon.  For those who don't already know it, Patch v3.1 will be Wrath's first content patch, with the main feature being the addition of an all-new raid known as Ulduar.  Popular speculation has Yogg-Saron - the second known "Old God" - or parts of him as the final boss.  Piggy-backing on the big content patch are numerous other tweaks, such as the classes changes discussed below. Making good on Ghostcrawler's promise, Eyonix threw up Part 1 of the upcoming changes.  However, only Rogues (yahoo), Priests and Shamans currently have a short-list of changes, every other class is "coming soon."  I am no Shaman, nor am I an expert Priest, but it seems pretty obvious that both classes have been buffed overall in the listed changes.  As for what my lovable little gnome thinks about his upcoming changes?  Awesome. PvP, that is the big change for Priests.  The notes specifically state that Shadow PvPers will see increased survivability thanks to a buff to Shadow Form which reduces magic damage along with physical damage.  Although no specific modifications were detailed, Eyonix notes that the developers are looking into making Holy have "additional PvP utility."  All the Discipline Priests shouldn't feel left out though, they get an entirely new ability, Power Word: Barrier, which is essentially a PW:S for their group.  Blizzard even through in some love for the whole class, adding Divine Spirit as a core ability. Shamans of the Elemental and Enhancement varieties also scored some additional, although undefined, PvP utility.  Following that, Dalaran's lag should be slightly lower come v3.1 thanks to the streamlining of Totems.  Mana Spring / Healing Stream Totems and Disease Cleansing / Poison Cleansing Totems have been combined. They are now two totems rather than four separate lag-inducing pillars of doom.  The nature-friendly class has received one modification that might be viewed as a nerf, Chain Lightning will jump to four targets, but do less damage.  The less damage could mean for the fourth jump or that the overall DPS output by CL will be lowered The number one change I was looking forward to for Rogues was how Blizzard planned to tackle the annoyance of keeping Hunger for Blood active.  For the none rogues out there, the spell had to be spammed three times, wasting two extra global cooldowns and 60 energy, to max it out.  Then it had to be refreshed every 30 seconds to keep it up.  While refreshing didn't break stealth - you could refresh while creeping to the next mob - it was incredibly annoying to worry about an ability with such a short duration that was so desperately needed.  The new HfB is a self-buff that can only be used when a bleed effect (anyone's bleed) is active.  While the need for a bleed is indeed a nerf, the 6% damage increase - from 9% with three stacks to 15% with no need for stacking - should help soothe that irritated skin. Like the other classes, rogues have also seen a selection of buffs beyond the HfB change.  Added haste, lower cooldowns and additional damage to various talents and abilities should make every rogue happy.  However, we do not know the exact amount these favorable changes will impact us, due to the numbers on a few of tweaks not being unveiled. The rest of the classes will be revealed in the upcoming parts of Eyonix's post.  Please hold off on the complaints until you see your own buffs.  Remember, these notes are not comprehensive and therefore do not list all the changes.  On the flip side, they can also be thrown out the window at a moment's notice. All of the changes do seem to be buffs, so perhaps Blizzard is saving all the nerfs for one giant post to get all the QQ out at once...Sly devils. In other news, numerous bugs have been found in WoW recently, but the developers are already hard at work on hotfixes. Update: Eyonix has posted more class changes.  Warriors, Warlocks and Druids should check out the post covering Part 2 of the changes.

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Remember that small issue Blizzard had with Zul'Gurub a few years ago? You know the one I am talking about. It revolved around one of Hakkar The Soulflayer's abillities, Corrupted Blood. The ability was harmless to most high level players, causing a direct hit of 875-1125 shadow damage plus 200 damage a second after that. It wasn't until someone managed to hearth to a major city with the debuff that the problems started. To lower level players and players not paying attention, the DOT could easily kill them, while spreading further.

Many servers were absolutely destroyed by the bug, with Blizzard running around to try and repair the damage. After the mess was finally cleaned up, the academics that focus on video games and/or contagious diseases became interested in the topic. Numerous academic outlets, including the Center for Disease Control (CDC), requested the data with hopes of using it as a model for real world research. A devastating bug in a video game may turn out to be good after all.

I am shocked and dismayed that so few people have put that little issue together with the current World Event going on in World of Warcraft. To me the events occurring now are clearly designed based on the accidental Corrupted Blood plague. For those of you who may not have noticed, various places in Azeroth have been delivered a package by someone, Booty Bay is considered to be the first. The packages began arriving hours after the Argent Dawn setup posts in all the major cities, warning all the citizens that the Lich King was coming. Oh, and said packages corrupt those around them with You're Infected!

There are slight differences between the Corrupted Blood issue and the Lich King World Event though. Those differences are easily attributed to that fact that the designers did this event on purpose. The You're Infected! debuff does no damage, it will simply turn you into an undead zombie should the timer run out. Getting hit by the zombie ability Mangle, will reduce your timer by a full minute, so mind those who hunger for brains. As of press time, most of the continent of Kalimdor on my server has been whipped clean of NPCs, cities and mobs.

I believe that Blizzard Poster Kisirani's statements lead credibility to my thoughts. When a poster said that the plague was to easy to avoid – Argent Healers, Priests, Paladins and Shamans can dispell it – Kisirani quipped “It certainly does seem containable, doesn't it? :)” Seems like a dead reference to how “easy” it should have been to contain Corrupted Blood. On the flip side, the crates have been appearing in more locations, as well as an introduction infected critters, such as roaches.  Making it easier for the zombies to lay waste to Azeroth.

So what are you guys doing? Plundering your homelands while having fun conversing with the opposing faction through zombie chat or are you defending your castle? Perhaps you are trying to find out exactly who is behind this mess? Or are you still stuck on farming those Hallow's End items?

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