Project Lore

When Patch v3.0.8 goes live, players everywhere will be graced with another ridiculous mount-race combination. The brave souls on the Player Test Realms can already witness the sight of a Raptor, one of the most vicious dinosaurs on our earth, crying as a hefty Tauren hops on his back. And yet, the sight pals in comparison to what I, and countless other gnomes, have pulled off in the last few weeks. Riding a giant.

A Gnome on a Kodo is hilarious in its own right, but imagine a Gnome guiding a giant through Zul'Drak. Actually, there is no need to imagine, just look at the screenshot. Not only is this Solidsamm's first ride on a leviathan (sorry Thrakki), but it is his first taste of the new phasing technology designed for Wrath. And what a taste.

It took me awhile to notice that as soon as I mounted the revenge-minded Storm Giant, most of the other players in the zone disappeared. After that fact crossed my synapses, a lightbulb went off telling me that I never saw the giants roaming the area while I was grinding. I emphasized most for a reason though. The fun begins when you mount Gymer and see the collection of other Gymer's roaming the land. You can even PvP with them - although a match would likely last forever, and not grant any honor – as evidenced by my Gymer punting the other one across the zone!

Although the quest is essentially another vehicle-oriented quest, it allows one to feel indestructible while you rampage the Scourge. An awesome feeling indeed. If you missed it while racing to level 80 or have yet to reach Zul'Drak, make sure you head over to Gymer in Thrym's End to begin his chain. The short chain allows you to quickly get to the point of topic.  You won't regret the time spent.

Sorry for always being a critic, but as cool as the chain is, it could have been a little better. There really isn't much lore behind Gymer, making the gameplay mechanics (and possibly the loot) the only reason to take up his reigns. Blizzard seems to have gone to great lengths to implement the Storm Giant, too bad the back story is left relatively bear.  How could a character of this magnitude, and sheer size, not have great stories about him?

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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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