Project Lore

Totally pulling a Heartbourne and putting this on the left side of the page.But, really, when are they ever? Balance, as always, is a bit of a chameleon, constantly shifting to meet the demands of a new environment (in this case, the ways in which a player and the game interact).

News of forthcoming class changes comes from a bit of an odd source this time, though -- Blizzard's own World of Warcraft Facebook fan page:

Death knights, druids, hunters, mages, rogues, warlocks, warriors, oh my! For those participating in our public testing of the upcoming minor content patch 3.3.3, look out this week for a host of fascinating new adjustments to these classes. Chains of Ice innately does what? Nature's Grasp has how many charges? Vitality boosts stamina by how much? Stay tuned to find out the answer to these and more questions!

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Dungeon maps? Yes, please!

While my game was patching this afternoon, I took a look through WoW's official Patch Notes on 3.1. We've already been talking a lot about some of the larger ticket items including Ulduar and related achievements, dual spec, armor upgrades, profession changes and the unfortunate delay of Equipment Manager. Now, there's a WHOLE lot more that we'll undoubtedly be combing over in the coming days and weeks, but until then let's take a look at some of the other random details from the Secrets of Ulduar page and the patch notes that jumped out at me. My aim for this first round up is to detail what will affect all of us, as opposed to the specific. The convenience factor:

• All Ground Mounts may now swim without dismounting the rider. Flying Mounts still may NOT, and will dismount the rider upon entering water.
• Players will now be able to queue for battlegrounds from any location. Leaving a battleground will return you to the location from which you entered.
• Applying a glyph no longer requires a Lexicon of Power. The same rules for switching between dual talent specializations now apply to switching glyphs and cannot be performed while in combat, Battlegrounds (except when Preparation is up), or Arenas (no exceptions).

Class changes:

• Death Knights have a TON of changes that will take some time to readjust. Some spells got buffed, some got nerfed. With time, we'll see what the overall affect is. If I had to guess, it may be an overall nerf.
• Druids, hunters, paladins, priests, shamans and warlocks also are seeing substantial class changes.
• Mages and warriors will see some changes but not as many.
• Rogues, my specialty, may possibly be getting an overall buff. A couple of skills got debuffed, but not by a ton. /hopeful! What I'm looking forward to most -- Killing Spree: Now also increases all damage done by the rogue while active by 20%.

Professions: cooking:

• A new recipe has been added to cooking trainers for making Black Jelly, using several Borean Man 'O War as ingredients. While it looks disgusting, it restores more health and mana than the highest level food.
• Flint and Tinder is no longer necessary for creating a campfire. You're just that resourceful!
• Ingredients such as Spices, Apples, and the like have been removed from most cooking recipes.
• Several Northrend recipes were given greater skill up ranges to make it easier to reach 450 cooking skill.
• You no longer need to learn cooking from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

And for the all-important First Aid:

• You no longer need to complete the “Triage” quest to attain Artisan First Aid. Instead you can learn the Artisan skill from the trainers in the capital cities.
• You no longer need to learn First Aid from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

And Fishing:

• A new (and very rare) special mount can now be caught from Northrend fishing pools (hmmm, what could it be?).
• The time needed to catch fish has been reduced.
• You can now fish anywhere, regardless of skill. Every catch has the potential for fishing skill gains, but you are likely to catch worthless junk in areas that are too difficult for your skill.
• You no longer need to learn fishing from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

The only bummer for me on professions, and this is of my own doing, comes from Leatherworking:

• Added a recipe for combining Borean Leather Scraps into Borean Leather. You can still use Borean Scraps from your inventory to combine them. (I JUST combined a TON of these without the recipe, and hence got no levels for it. Sadness!)

Dungeons:

• New dungeon maps have been added for all Wrath of the Lich King dungeons. (YAAAAAAAY!!)

User Interface:

• New Advanced features for quest tracking are now available. Players will need to activate this option within the Interface panel.
• Several new options for increased graphics such as Video Mode Ultra, higher Shadow Quality detail and new high-resolution player textures for Northrend armor sets.
• Players can now return items purchased with an alternate currency back to the original vendor within 2 hours of the purchase time for the original cost of the item. Stackable items (such as Frozen Orbs and gems) and charged items that can be purchased with an alternate currency are not eligible.
• Confirmation boxes have been added to purchases over 150 gold.
• The calendar now supports a guild-wide sign-up sheet, allowing the event organizer to invite his or her entire guild.
• Class roles (i.e. damage, tanking, healing) have been added to the Looking For Group feature. Class roles will be displayed when sorting through the Looking For More section.
• Quest and Achievement tracking are now combined in a new Objectives Tracking window. Advanced features can be activated from the Objectives Options panel.
• On-Use items will display in the Objectives Tracking when tracking a quest that uses them. No more searching through your bags for that on-use quest item!
• Health and Fuel/Ammo bars have been added to the vehicle interface whenever operating a vehicle.
• The mini-map has been optimized for better performance. Displays for vehicles, class colors, and off-map pings have been added as well.

Items:

• Loot from clams now stacks correctly! (Thank the Azeroth heavens)
• Changed the icon for Succulent Clam Meat so it doesn't look quite as disgusting. Now 100% more succulent!
• A whole ton of glyph changes.
• Three new mounts are available from Horde mount vendors, equalizing the number of purchasable normal and epic mounts: the Black Wolf, the White Kodo, and the Black Skeletal Horse (in Orgrimmar, Bloodhoof Village, and Brill respectively).
• Hearthstone: Cooldown has been reduced to 30 minutes down from 60 minutes. (!!)Bug Fixes - there's a bunch for all the classes, some items and some race-related. Good stuff to make your game play a more enjoyable experience.

For the full notes, check WoW's patch notes page, and keep checking back with Project Lore as we wrap our heads around all these changes!

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Big news on the content front, Content Patch 3.1 has hit the Public Test Realms and is now ready for testing.  This isn't entirely shocking, the PTR Character Copy went live on Friday so it was just a matter of time.  Unfortunately, if you didn't get the memo over the weekend then you are out of luck.  As of press time, you can no longer get in the Character Copy queue.  On the flip side, this is Blizzard, so they could open up additional slots at any moment. Once you manage to get on the queue, half the battle is won.  The wait time on the queue has dropped from a few weeks to a few days in the span of hours.  Fear not prospective testers of Ulduar, the controversial Dual Spec and all of those class changes, you should be tearing it up in v3.1 by the end of the week.  Players quicker on the draw than myself have already logged into the the PTR and given us some early information on the unnamed patch's changes. For starters, the poor toons out there better read up on our collection of gold generating posts.  As it stands now, the Dual Spec feature will cost level 80s 1000g to train, which should not be difficult to swing.  The big news of the PTR isn't these small kind of details in my opinion.  That would be reserved for the discovery of a previously unannounced feature, the Argent Tournament. The new world tournament will open up mounted combat to us and a whole lot more.  The super secret Argent Tournament - props to keeping the feature on lockdown this long - will unleash a new set of daily quests for the Argent Crusade, enabling players to score new items, titles, banners, tabards, pets, mounts, all new achievements and more.  Being a bit of a lore nut, I find the tournament a creative way to subtly hint to players that the Crusade is extending its reach into Icecrown , while becoming a powerful faction to the rest of the citizens of Azeroth.  This will make their move against Arthas more progressive - thus, realistic - than just having them pop-up next to the Citadel en masse. I have never been one to go nuts on the PTR.  For starters, I hate spoilers.  Past that, I tend to dislike having abilities or features, getting used to them, and then seeing them ripped away from my grasp when the patch goes live.  Perhaps SolidSamm will spend more time than normal, but I highly doubt it. Anyone lucky enough to get on the PTR already?  Like what you see?  Or, are you stuck waiting like most of us?  What are your thoughts on the new tournament?

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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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Mages, Death Knights and Hunters definitely need to be aware of Ghostcrawler's most recent posts. The face of the forums has tore it up over the last two days, announcing changes to all three classes that are sure to upset some, but will having others jump for joy.

Some of the changes he listed are now part of the just posted v3.0.8 PTR notes, which include a new mount-based Achievement, complete with an exclusive mount as the reward. Although this probably isn't exactly what the people QQing in the comments of this post had in mind, it is a start. An expensive start considering if you bought ground epic mounts for half of the required 100 mounts, you'd be dropping something like 5000g. And I don't think there are even that many available.  So let's just call it a crapton of gold.

I will just start this off with the bad news. Dorkins, prepared to be nerfed to the ground. Ghostcrawler's notes specifically mention that Hunters, PvE Beastmastery Hunters to be more specific, are doing too much god damn damage for Blizzard's liking. While the designers hoped other classes would catch up to them, they haven't, thus comes a series of nerfs. The developers figured the best way to hurt PvE damage, while skirting the PvP balance issue, would be to heavily modify Steady Shot and Volley. Ouch!

From the blue:

• Steady Shot – now only gains 10% of attack power as damage (down from 20%).
• Volley – reduced the damage by about 30% for all ranks. Note that AE damage from many classes is very high right now and we are looking at all of them. Volley in particular had reached the point where some hunters were using it to the exclusion of most other attacks.

Death Knights are getting the opposite treatment of Hunters. The changes to the newest and most populous class - for the moment – revolve around modify tanking a good deal, while reducing their defense capabilities for PvP. Those PvEers out there, specifically the ones who rolled a DK for tanking, should be excited. From my understanding of the changes, and the class, the PvP modifications aren't nearly the nerf that Hunters received on the PvE end.  Blood Aura doing double the healing...think I may go Blood when I return to my DK.

As for our faithful Blinkers out there, some of you will be happy to hear that you have a buff coming your way. I quantified that previous sentence with 'some' because the buffs only apply to those mages that are Arcane spec. To be honest, I do not know, and possibly have never known, a mage that was Arcane spec. Nonetheless, Blizzard will has decided that that particular spec needs a hand, going so far as to completley redesigning the Arcane Blast ability.

• Arcane Blast – overhauled. Will now increase the damage of your next Arcane spell by 15/30/45%. However using Arcane Blast itself does not consume the charge, but instead increases the mana of your next Arcane Blast, up to a maximum of 3 stacks (and a 45% buff). You can alternate Blast and Barrage to keep buffing Barrage, or you can build Blast up higher for a heavy mana cost.

To sum it up, we have Hunters' PvE being super-nerfed with a buff in survivability for PvP. Death Knight's Blood spec is more attractive for tanking, with tanking mechanics relying less on cooldowns and a small nerf to their defense in PvP. Arcane Mages get a nice bump in damage, however, Blizzard is keeping a close eye on them to see if they become too powerful in PvP, or the class in general taking the lead in PvE damage output.

As for me, my two main characters have barely been touched. Fan of Knives is now better, but my rogue lacks the ability, so blah. Circle of Healing now has a 6 second cooldown, instead of just the global cooldown. That sucks, but I hated spamming it so much anyways.

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