Project Lore

Patch 3.0.8 is now up on live servers, and the patch notes are long, especially for a "minor content patch." There are a multitude of changes that different people are bound to focus on including the Circle of Healing and Wild Growth nerf, the "Great Hunter Nerf of 2009," Slow Fall and Levitate castable on others, Paladin's new single target taunt and ranged pull spell, Rogue AoE, and more. Besides the changes to many class abilities, there have been some interesting game mechanic changes. One of the very first things I did once I got the patch installed and stopped staring at the pretty new launcher window was sell my items that summoned bosses to instances. This included my Blackened Urn, Mallet of Zul'Farak, and Scepter of Celebras. These three items netted me about 10g, but also freed up some much needed bank space. Other than that, one of the first things on my personal agenda is to grind up some reputation with factions that I've neglected due to their low rep gains. This includes most of the old world reps like Argent Dawn and Cenarion Circle, both of which will net me a new title once I hit exalted with them. Earlier today, Bastosa immediately hit me and a few other guildies up for an Azjol Nerub run to get the Gotta Go! Achievement and his Glory of the Hero red proto drake. So, it seems that different people see different things in the patch. What is the first thing on your agenda post 3.0.8?

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I don’t think I am the only one growing a little impatient for the promised patch 3.0.8. I really don’t know why I am so anxious, but I am. It is only a minor patch, and I shudder to think how fidgety I will be before the release of Uldar.

Maybe its just me, but it seems like think thing has been up on the PTR forever. While we are only getting some polish and a few changes there are 3 things that have me really excited about this patch.

1. Paladin single target taunt. Finally, this is something I have wanted for as long as I have been a tank, and I can’t wait to see how this fits into my rotation.

2. New enchants. Specifically new tanking enchants (edit: tanking enchant... sigh). As someone who strives to collect all available enchants, this is a big double dip for me!

3. Gotta Go Nerfed. Maybe I am being lazy, but this is the only heroic achievements I have not done yet, and I want my red proto-drake! Sure I could put together an extreme group and spend half a day and grind this out, but somehow it just seems easier to walk through.

There is much more, but those things alone have had me running to my computer every Tuesday morning for the last 3 weeks hoping to see some signs of a patch release. Signs seem to say that this coming Tuesday is likely, but that’s what I said last week. If not this Tuesday it would have to be the one after, right? I can only hope.

How about you guys? Are you looking forward to 3.0.8? I know there are mixed feeling of excitement and dread on class rebalances, and somethings that are minor, but none the less cool (repairing scrap bots!). So what is your take on the pending (we can only hope) patch? If you are not sure, take a look and the patch notes here.

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Blizzard Poster Wryxian added a wall of blue text to the official forums yesterday, dealing entirely with the upcoming patch. Being the first major patch since Wrath of the Lich King went live means we expect many changes, but the list is slowly leaning towards ridiculousness. As of yesterday, the up-to-date Player Test Realm notes for Patch v3.0.8 stands at a full six posts from our boney friend. Needless to say, it is a lot to digest and cover.

Not everything is new to the list, so if you have been keeping yourself abreast of the situation, then you will only have to add small morsels to your extensive knowledge. Every aspect of World of Warcraft will see some small changes with v3.0.8. Some of the most drastic changes target the newly added Wrath content, namely the Death Knight class. Most of that information is old hat, but tweaks to Wrath's PvP contributions aren't. Despite the laundry list of changes to Lake Wintergrasp and Strand of the Ancients, nothing comes off as earth shattering, except the change in marks. For some actual game changes we have to move to the professions.

Here are some of the highlights to the profession changes:

• All flasks no longer require an alchemy lab to create. (Alchemy)
• Reduced the cooldown on Northrend Alchemy Research from 7 days to 3 days. (Alchemy)
• Succulent Orca Stew and Shoveltusk Soup have been removed from the requirements for any cooking achievements as they will not be added to the game. (Cooking)
• Many high level enchantment recipes have had the amount of Infinite Dust and Greater Cosmic Essence requirements significantly reduced, but with Dream Shards being added to them. (Enchanting)
• Added a new recipe to convert a frozen orb and some green quality gems into several superior quality gems. (Jewelcrafting)
• Mining veins and deposits no longer require multiple hits to receive all the ore. Players will receive around the same amount of ore, stone, and gems they would have received from multiple hits. (Mining)

Personally, my two main toons are not too effected by any of the changes. My priest is in it for the money, thus she is a strict gatherer – Skinning and Herbalism. The rogue will love the change to mining, even though it is four years late, for its speediness.  The flip side is that he will miss the ability to Sap, ninja and go for a HK that he enjoyed so. Heck, even their class changes aren't worth mentioning.  Can't complain about cheaper enchants though!

Blizzard managed to squeak in some UI changes that no one specifically asked for, but are happy to see. The company has pledged to implement much needed anti-scamming measures into WoW and the first of such will come with this patch. MMO-Champion.com gave us the first details and screenshots the other day, and it is a valiant effort by Blizzard, but I am not sure how much scamming it will curb. In practice a GM chat request window will pop-up when a GM wishes to chat with you. Upon clicking it a self-contained GM chat window will show up on the screen.

This is all fine and dandy, but the biggest problem is the dissemination of the information. I doubt most players will realize the request feature has been added, so they won't expect it, leaving some of them open to the same type of scamming we see today. At least Blizzard is finally trying something though, even if it is just to cover their ass.  Naturally, the one thing Wryxian didn't update us on is when the patch is coming out...

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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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So I’m sure many of you have heard, the Paladin heyday is over. We are getting hit with the Nerf Bat… and HARD. Being the token Project Lore Paladin, I thought I should weigh in on this. First of all I should clarify this nerf is aimed mostly at Retribution. Ret was buffed beyond belief in 3.0.2, and I will admit, probably to a fault. The most obvious overbalance being in PVP. I have heard tales of retadins taking out 4-5 opposing players at a time, bubbling, taking out a few more, laying on hands, and going back again. They have been accused of being unkillable and dealing way too much damage. I’m not going to argue that things are right, in fact I’ll agree that they are very wrong. I must say this whole ordeal as been hard to take as a Paladin. In WoW you grow a certain attachment to the class you play, it becomes part of your identity, and I can’t help but take a lot of the recent criticism a bit personally. There has been massive QQ over what pallies can do. It has gotten to a point that other players are getting angry over it. People are accusing us of being “cheap” or being “cheaters.” This is way out of bounds for me. We are playing our class! We didn’t hack the game to get over powered, it just happened! Sure, I know lots of us have been making the most of it, but I don’t think we are doing anything wrong. Regardless it seems that the chaos is coming to an end. Looking over the list that our good friend Ghostcrawler posted, there are quite a few changes coming down the pipeline. Some of which have already been hotfixed into the game, and a few more that are going to hit in upcoming patches. While I understand this is all part of the class balancing act, I do have a concern, namely the 20% damage nerf to seals and judgments. Consider me a bit selfish, but I can't help but worry that the nerfs to ret are spilling over into the other trees. The Judgment/seal nerf will affect my threat as a tank, no doubt about it. Given, Blizzard acknowledges it, but I think they need to find a way to prevent it, not say they will look into if there is a big problem. They have stated they are very happy with the way Prot has shaped up, so why mess with the formula to teach another spec a lesson? In the end reading over patch notes gives us a very poor idea of how the game play will actually shape up. We are just going to have to wait until we can play these changes to know if they have done too much, not enough, or got it right. All I know is that I will be paying very close attention.

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Oh, Hallow's End, how you have drawn me into the game once more. I mentioned in my Hallow's End Achievements post that it is my favorite seasonal event in Azeroth, and real life. The new Achievements, items and especially the candy, that Hallow's End offers has drawn me back to the game ahead of Wrath of the Lich King, which I did not expect to happen. I may not be raiding, but I am playing as much as before, if not more.

My new priest has received most of my Hallow's End play time, as well as most of my time in general. I have tackled a few of those Achievements I mentioned, despite the fact that I said I don't really care. I guess when I am so close to completing things like Tricks and Treats of Eastern Kingdoms, I get sucked into the idea of the pretty colors and effects flashing across my screen when I grab my last goodie. Unfortunately, I haven't tested my new found healing abilities in The Graveyard of Scarlet Monastery yet. The Headless Horsemen is just going to have to wait until I am 70, which should be before the event ends on November 1^st. I really need to get her in there so can experience the encounter as a healer.  Of course, she could also use the two rings, the mount, and squashling.

If I don't think my Priest is going to make it to 70 by the end of this week, I guess I will just start farming the Horseman on my Rogue. The rogue still needs an epic flyer, and while I will still have to cough up most of the money for the riding skill, at least I will look cool on the hard-to-get mount. Sadly, nothing else but the encounter itself is really needed.

I know Hallow's End is just a few days old at this point. Judging from the comments in my last post, that hasn't stopped some of you from completing the insane Hallowed Be Thy Name Achievement. Props to those who managed to accomplish it in only four days time, especially if you finished it before A Mask for All Occasions' removal. What are you guys going to do now? Work on scoring it on your alts, back to farming gold ahead of Wrath or abusing the EZMode raids due to the new patch?

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There certainly is a lot of activity on WoW after the latest patch. Everyone has new talents, abilities, and mechanics. After a bit of a rough start, especially for the Executus server with intermittent problems over a day after the patch, I managed to log on long enough to pick up my newest mount, the Big Blizzard Bear. Other than doing that, I was completely lost. No addons, no talents, missing spells, what was I to do? As enhancement, before 3.0, I pretty much knew what to do. I had all of my addons perfectly setup to make me the most efficient ass kicking machine ever. All of that is now in the past. One of the first things I needed to do after patching to do was set up Dominos, a replacement for my previous favorite action bar addon, Bongos. Then I went through to figure out where to put talents. My spec could probably use a little work after playing for a little bit. Next, I had to figure out what to actually do in order to kick ass post 3.0.2. I have a few new spells and talents that I needed to prioritize. Stormstrike for me is still the best instant available, since it does a bunch of damage and can proc a bunch of other things, including Windfury, Maelstrom Weapon, Flurry, among the other crazy trinkets and procs that I have. Lava Lash seems to make Flametongue a viable offhand imbue, but according to my uncontrolled test environment (I really should spend some more time at the training dummies in Ironforge, near the Military Ward), I still prefer dual WF. Now that hit and spell hit are a single stat, I am extremely close to the spell hit cap, and I can pretty much use Earth Shock without fear of a resist and it gets crit chance from some of my gear. In order of priority, Stormstrike, Earth Shock, and Lava Lash are my bread and butter instant casts. If Maelstrom Weapon is stacked to 5, I'll use it for Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, or a Healing Wave (I can't wait to setup Clique to optimize off-healing). So, I pretty much set up a macro to optimize my DPS. Improved Stormstrike has an 8 second cooldown. Earth Shock untalented has a 6 second cooldown, Lava Lash also has a 6 second cooldown, and the max global cooldown is 1.5 seconds. So, the macro goes like this: /castsequence reset=8 Stormstrike, Earth Shock, Lava Lash Hammering this macro between other spells will make me miss an Earth Shock cooldown every once in a while, but makes things super simple while I am still trying to figure out Maelstrom Weapon along with my new favorite friends, Feral Spirit. I'll talk about them later, because they are so much fun.

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So as many of you know, the patching process didn't exactly go smoothly for Blizzard. There were delays, installation issues, server issues, add-on issues, and for the fortunate few (like myself) you lost all your vanity pets and mounts. Yes... I know to look in the character screen, those babies are gone. Apparently it's a "display issue" That's not what I want to talk about, however. Once I plowed through all the speed bumps, things were actually pretty fun! I logged on with tons of new stuff to do and things to get excited about. While learning new mechanics has been a bit of a process, man, is it fun to see what my characters can do! My Paladin is pumping out more damage than I ever thought possible, and I have to say Hammer of Righteousness is about the coolest thing I have cast in a long time. Not only is it a great AoE, but I just love that sound it makes! (I know,  but you have to appreciate the small things). There were a few unexpected surprises as well. Once I got all trained up and got my hair cut, I started on a project I hadn't even considered before the patch dropped. I hit the AH and started buying up some glyphs to buff up my spellbook. Once I figured out where the Lexicon of Power was, I had a bunch of little enhancements to play with! Finally, I have to say, I just love the new achievements and titles. Allow myself to introduce you to Bastosa Jenkins (or is it Steve Marcus Bastosa Jenkins now?). On a serious note,  it has been a great excuse to check out some old content, and explore some of the secluded places in Azeroth I have never made it to. While I didn't get credit for everything I have done thus far, I think I am really going to enjoy going back and crossing all those old bosses off the achievement list. If this is a taste of what Wrath is going to be like, I am even more excited. Blizzard has done away with boredom of the downtime, and has given us all something fun to experience. Now if I could only get my epic flyer back...

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Oh sweet jumping Jesus.  Patch 3.0.2 is apparently creeping up on us sooner than I expected.  Blizzard Poster Zarhym announces that the bridging patch is going to be a large one.  Not that we expected anything less, considering the size of the pre-TBC “Before the Storm” patch.  I already touched on some changes that were announced when the patch was first revealed but the news of the impending download calls for an update. For starters, Zarhym warns us that this patch will be big.  So big that the flying skull wants all users to activate their Background Downloader to prepare to download the data that has been finalized.  It is also mentioned that the downloader should be downloading faster in general now.  Seems that they tweaked their torrent system a bit. The process should be enabled shortly. Even though we received the warning, Blizzard has still not added any patch notes to their site.  It's likely we will see some patch notes this week to elaborate on all the known changes. We also have some anecdotal evidence to hint at how soon the patch may be coming.  First off, the PTR forums have been wiped, which usually occurs before a patch heads to them.  I should mention that much of the new stuff has been tested on the beta realms extensively, meaning a PTR session could theoretically be skipped.  Secondly, the Launcher is now displaying a Wrath of the Lich King splashscreen.  Nothing groundbreaking or concrete, but evidence nonetheless. Here is some of the stuff we already know is coming with the new patch:

• Massive alterations to the way raid buffs/debuffs work
• A built in Guild Calendar
• New class spells and talents
• Stormwind Harbor
• Barbershops
• Two new Arenas
• Inscription profession
• Hunter pet changes and additions
• Zul'Aman bears no longer awarded

Get to work on those bear mounts guys.  I will be content with waiting for a Polar Bear though.

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Some more details have been coming out about the pre-Wrath of the Lich King content patch. As you know, the upcoming patch will act as a “bridging” patch. What this means is that Blizzard will use patch 3.0.2 to introduce a chunk of the Wrath changes, before Wrath is launched. This is the same thing Blizzard did with patch 2.0.1, introducing some aspects of The Burning Crusade into vanilla World of Warcraft. That addition came just a little over a month before TBC's release. Eyonix mentioned as part of patch 3.0.2's announcement that the notes would be coming shortly. However they still have not been posted. Nevertheless, Blizzard has posted additional information through alternative means. First we have a promise from Bornakk that the game won't be broken by the patch. I still remember the horror of “Assault on Blackwing Lair” or patch 1.6.0. I never wanted to use add-ons again after how long it took for all of my add-ons to be repaired, and then the time it took to go find them.  One by one.  Thankfully, we have tools like BLASC now. Bornakk also mentions that the patch should arrive “in the coming weeks”. To back up that statement the PTR forums have been wiped. An act that always happens shortly before a new patch is tested. Zarhym brought us the first list of detailed changes yesterday, the long promised changes to raid buffs/debuffs and stacking. The changes are drastic and the post is long, so it is worth the read for the hardcore PvE players out there. The Summation:

• Most buffs/debuffs will be raid-wide (ie Warrior shouts, Shaman totems).
• All buffs are categorized in one or more of 30 categories. Most categories have only a few buffs in them.
• Buffs from the same categories will not stack, with the most powerful buff taking precedence
• Mana regeneration buffs to be assigned to 10 players with the least mana
• Numerous existing buffs and debuffs have been reworked for the new system

Blizzard hopes that the changes will allow raiders to bring whomever is available to a raid – within reason - instead of requiring a concrete template be filled. Zarhym noted that Blizzard will be fine tuning the system and changes as needed based on internal testing and community feedback. So start the feedback process.

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