Project Lore

Making the trek to Ahune should be a lot easier this year.A new version of Patch 3.3.3 hit the PTR today. To be completely honest, there's not a whole lot in this build that we haven't already tipped you off to. From the new holiday boss mechanics to the class changes hinted on Facebook last night, it's all there. 

But if you still need a quick run-down of what's been modified in 11599, here are some highlights:

• Holiday bosses can now only be fought by queuing up through the Dungeon Finder system or special NPCs (likely to be found in major cities). As a result, the previous requirements for summoning these bosses has been removed.
• Death Knights' Chains of Ice now automatically inflicts Frost Fever.
• Druids' Nature's Grasp spell now has 3 charges.
• Hunters' Ferocious Inspiration is now an aura.
• Warriors' Vitality talent now buffs Stamina by 3/6/9%.

The rest of the details, including more class changes, can be found after the jump!

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Blue Stew is a new semi-daily column bringing you a delicious concoction of developer news, thoughts, and opinions straight from the boiling pot that is the official World of Warcraft forums. The highlights of each day include additional commentary by Project Lore staff. It's once again been a few days since the last update, but don't fret! After having some Chili from Wendy's for lunch, I was inspired to make this Stew extra chunky! Goodbye World of Warcraft You thought you had a bone to pick with Blizzard? Well, I bet 10 gold Pureheart's got you beat! Besides wanting to turn Azeroth into a communist state, he also manages to represent just about everything wrong with the worst of the game's players. Mindless whining? Check. Anti-social attitude while playing a social game? Check. Unfounded sense of entitlement? Check. Need to make his inane opinions known before allegedly "quitting" the game? Double check. Let's see precisely what he has to say about the nature of guilds, raiding, and the resulting rewards:

"First of all its not fun when other players have something you cant get, its bad enough having to put up with this in the real world in the form of rich celebrities who have everything like nice cars, money, etc... unfortunatley the game design doesnt allow for the majority of players to be successful at the game."

OK, let's be completely straight here. Even in a fantasy world, you've got to work for what you earn. The real treat is that instead of waiting years for that promotion or pay increase, you can obtain a new piece of gear or a few achievements in the matter of a few hours. The game needs to cater to various types of people willing to put different amounts of time or effort in. With tons of solo-friendly content in the game, I don't understand why someone like Pureheart can't be happy with what he is able to obtain.

"Also the game used to be fun, but now it just seems to be a gear competition, who has the best gear... this is not my idea of fun or cool. Like i said the game is very good, i love the raid boss fights but, the amount of stress and effort involved in getting there isnt worth it for me personally."

Yakov Smirnoff wants his schtick back! Gear envy is an interesting phenomenon to me to me, though. Pureheart seems to disply an innate resistance to the mechanics of the end-game, but the problem is that the gear he seems to want is rewarded to players so that they can progress farther within it. Rarely does Blizzard throw a new encounter into the game without taking into account the best currently available gear, ensuring that said progression functions much like a step-ladder. In other words, gear that drops from Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, and XT-002 in Ulduar should prepare you well enough for the fights later in the dungeon. We often forget that high item-level equipment serves a function beyond looking cool, and that's where Pureheart's contradictions kill me. He rails against the very kind of person he reveals himself to be: a loot whore. He hates that World of Warcraft has turned into a gear competition, and yet, he seems angry because he feels that he is unable to obtain the gear that he desires.

"To sum up, to many annoying people and factors in the game, i cant handle it anymore and i dont want to waste time and effort trying, and i cant play without joining a guild because its to annoying when other players have better gear/mounts than me, so all the fun is taken away from this once rich and beautifulk world i really used to enjoy being in."

So fun is taken away when the game tries to challenge you? Would it honestly be better if any piece of gear was handed to you anytime you want? I suppose it does for this player, who so desperately wants to "[escape] the capatlist society of real life." Moving on. Tank Balance And Encounter Design Speaking of raiding, how do we feel about the difficulty of the dungeons? Even though this is a surprisingly insightful thread, I don't bring up Lyesmith's post specifically to talk about tanking. Rather, to shed light on the ways in how players react to, and shape, new encounters designed by Blizzard. Lyesmith's beliefs can be summed up as such:

"TL;DR: Tank balance has two sides: the player and the boss. If the bosses favor a particular style, then it will show up player side."

Essentially, his argument is that despite what Blizzard reps might say about tank choice ("bring the player, not the class") that certain encounters overwhelmingly favor one type of tank over another. For instance, Mimiron has several abilities that can instantly kill the tank, making a class with more "oh shit buttons" more efficient at taking the brunt of the damage. However, Nilzen claims that encounters are designed the other way around:

"But the truth is, players act a specific way due to encounter mechanics. Encounter mechanics are designed a certain way because of what Blizzard sees that players can do. Avoidance levels were too high. Blizzard makes bosses hit for 80% of a tank's hp because they otherwise avoid too much. Tanks stack stamina. Blizzard makes Impale and other mechanics to counter stamina stacking."

So, instead of creating bosses intentionally designed to favor certain tank or class combinations, he asserts that they're designed due to the way the players have reacted and dealt with encounters in the past. Both posters are more or less correct, as game balance is a never-ending cycle created by this dynamic relationship between trend-setting players and the raid design team. So, is there a way to keep tanks on their toes without relying solely on stacking one stat or another? Lyesmith and Nilzen both offered up the idea of making certain boss abilities slightly more random. Therefore, skill and reaction time would be more important than what class currently seems to be leading the pack. Other fine thoughts included increasing raid damage in order to taxs the healers (so keeping the tank up would become even tougher) and tuning down player stats across the board This brings me to the second point that I wanted to touch on, and it more directly relates to difficulty. You can argue that raids have gotten fundamentally easier over time. You can also argue whether or not most players have simply gotten better at playing the game over time. But one thing I don't think anyone can deny is how extra-mechanical elements such as mods and strategy sites have made "figuring out" any given encounter a lot easier than it once was. It seems that Ghostcrawler feels this way, too:

"If it feels like you aren't struggling to learn these fights as much as you used to, then that's probably true: there are now many sources for videos and strategies that have become a lot more robust and user-friendly, as well as pretty sophisticated UI mods to help you track everything going on. The whole raiding community is just more well-connected than it was in the MC and BWL days. Many casual raiders could name a handful of cutting-edge guilds these days, which just didn't happen 4 years ago."

Just think for a second how much tougher certain encounters might be if you didn't have Deadly Boss Mods counting down the time to the next use of an ability or even if in-game warning didn't flash on the screen when the boss was about to use a raid-wiping mechanic. Sure, add-ons like GRID might be slightly more kosher, as they primarily improve play control, but even they offer quick access to data that you'd otherwise have to click on individual players to figure out. The reason for the popularity of these mods is because they fundamentally reduce the innate chaos of an encounter by giving you access to information in an way that is much easier to process. If information is power, then it becomes even stronger than the best gear in the game. The problem is when said information becomes too convenient and starts outstripping its basic ability to reduce the chaos. At that point, it just plain makes a fight easier. And I haven't even touched on top-level strategies that are quickly formed by the best players and then posted on the internet for everyone else to follow. Usually, unless an encounter is changed drastically on live servers, these tactics are learned on the PTR, so you end up with the sort of situation we encounter time and time again where new bosses are being downed the first night they're widely available. I feel like I'm sort of making up for a few days of Blue Stew absence, but the fact of the matter is that this post is already running longer than it probably should be. If you're interested in this subject, I'd go ahead and read the rest of the thread as it's linked above, and I'm always up for rapping with you guys and gals in the comments section if you'd like to explore things further! Until next time, ta-ta!

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Blue Stew is a new daily column bringing you a delicious concoction of developer news, thoughts, and opinions straight from the boiling pot that is the official World of Warcraft forums. The highlights of each day include additional commentary by Project Lore staff. It's a surprisingly tame day on the forums, folks. Well, of course there's the usual whining, and some questions about the Paid Faction Change, but if you want to find answers to those or discuss the new service, Project Lore's coverage is a really good place to start (I even wrote it myself!). With that said, I've still managed to cherry-pick a few things that I think are worth looking at: So Explain To Me Again... Weapon Skill: Quite possibly the most useless skill in the game! Wait, wasn't that supposed to be Spirit? Nerthuz must be suffering from Memory Gremlins in her brain again, because she can't remember what she was told last time she asked about Weapon Skill. It must be hard with those nasty little critter eatin' up your thoughts and all. But, hey, she has a point. What is up with Weapon Skill, anyway? This is an issue we've covered here at Project Lore before. Why iTZKoopA posted something about it just one month ago, and he came to the conclusion that it was a sloppy, poorly-implemented stat, though it may have simply been used as a limiter to keep people from tackling mobs way above their current level. But, then, couldn't weapon proficiency simply be built into levels instead of being something you need to raise? Why not just tack on an extra five points every time you ding and automatically pro-rate new skills you learn from Weapon Trainers? Lore-wise, I suppose there is some sort of justification. Ancilorn points out, in accordance with the theme of Nerthuz's original post: "The worlds most skilled swordsman are not so skilled when it comes to wielding axes in combat. They would have to hone their skill to become competent at wielding axes in combat effectively." Indeed, it makes sense that while just about anybody should be able to theoretically wield any weapon, Weapon Skill is associated with how well they can actually do it. In real life, anyone can learn to shoot a gun, but not everybody can be a Bob Munden. Still, I think it's an iffy stat. It's not terribly inconvenient to max out, but it does feel kind of useless. Even if its inclusion can be justified, maybe it should've been tossed out like all those other stats were at BlizzCon. Cataclysm Compilation Nothing snarky to say about Frejya, the kind of person that everyone on the official forums should strive to be. And it seems that Blizzard approves, as well, as they've given her the hallowed green text of a V.I.P. (Very Important Poster). Now that the Cataclysm section has been opened, Nethaera thought it was high time to move Frejya's extensive and resourceful thread on the next expansion to the new forum. The only flaw with it, of course, is the lack of back-linking to Project Lore! Be sure to check it out if you need to know something about Cataclysm on the fly! Two Minute Buffs Need [To Be] Changed! It just wouldn't be a normal day on the forums without Ghostcrawler addressing a little bit of QQ. This time, 'letter Z' fanatic Bearlizion wantz to know why Blizzard dizcriminatez againzt all of hiz two-minute buffz. This is where I bring up something we talked about yesterday, namely people who don't play the game as it is and rather desire to play it the way they want it to be. Usually, this means ignoring basic play mechanics in favor of unrestricted convenience. Why can't people realize that without limiters placed on your class, it wouldn't be fun to play at all? Ghostcrawler's sage advice shines like a light from the heavens once again: "With warrior shouts, the intent is that the resources do matter. You might not have enough rage at any given moment and part of the skill required in playing a warrior is making sure you have enough resources to both shout and do your other damage." The fun in playing the game comes from strategizing in combat and figuring out how to manage your resources and when to use your skills. As I see it, most Warriors (especially tanks), already deal with a rather bland experience and the best thing to do would be to make them more complex, not easier to play. GC goes on to detail a couple of ways in which that could be accomplished, but the common theme seems to be restructuring rage so that a Warrior tank would have to pay attention to it throughout an encounter and not just at the beginning of it. You guys do remember the old days, right? When threat was actually something people had to worry about? I know I can recall the days of having to strategically limit my DPS and make alternate use of Feint and Vanish to clear my aggro on the target. His other core idea is perhaps putting key Warrior buffs on CDs: "Imagine (I am arm waving for a moment) that Battle Shout and Commanding Shout didn't cost any rage and in fact gave you rage, but were on a cooldown. Then using the shouts might become a more interesting choice -- you'd want to use them at moments when you're rage-starved and generally not when you have a full bar. However, you'd also want to keep them going because of their buff so you couldn't neglect to use them too often either. A challenge of playing the class / a test of your skill would be to shout at the right moment to keep the buff up but also make sure you earn the rage when you most needed it." Sure sounds more interesting to me! But I don't play a Warrior as my main, so I'd like to hear what you more experienced players think of this sort of change. Keep in mind that they're only ideas and this is not an indication that the development team is going to suddenly change the class' mechanics. I just happen to believe that making any class more strategic to play can only be a good thing!

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I'm always on the look out for new tools to use to keep track of trends in WoW. And it looks like a favorite of mine, what used to be called TalentChic, recently updated to allow users to find the most popular gear, enchants and gems, depending on a number of filters. I wrote a post a while back about how to use the same site to find talent builds and appropriate glyphs for those filters, so I'll skip over that information this time around. Now, the site is renamed WoW Popular, and has several other useful tools. Here's a refresher on how it works:

"To find the most popular talent builds, the (WoW Popular) system scans both the US and EU WoW armory sites to find the talent points, glyphs, gear, enchants, and gems chosen by characters. It then sorts those according class, spec and playstyle and collates the results."

Now I'm sure this is a debatable point, but the site asserts that the results of this search show the most accessible gear for a class.

"Because there are a limited number of choices, the collective mind of all players usually migrates to the best, most accessible option for players. What’s ‘best’ (top tier raid gear, or top arena gear) is not attainable for most players so it is usually shown a little further down the list."

Time for a little fun. Let's test out the system by taking a look at the most popular gear items among players of ALL classes. Here's the top 5, as of my writing this post!

1. Sundial of the Exiled
2. Band of Channeled Magic
3. Ward of the Violet Citadel
4. Tabard of the Kirin Tor (I guess we have a lot of raiders looking for Kirin Tor rep rewards out there!)
5. Shroud of Luminosity

Now, how about a look at the most popular main-hand weapon, again among all classes:

1. Hammer of the Astral Plane
2. The Turning Tide
3. Wraith Strike
4. Torch of Holy Fire
5. The Impossible Dream

Let's narrow it down a bit - Now a look at the most popular main-hand weapon for a fury-specced warrior:

1. The Jawbone
2. Betrayer of Humanity (I'm envious of that DPS)
3. Titansteel Destroyer
4. Armageddon (You will destroy the world with this weapon)
5. Ironsoul

As you can see, you can narrow down or broaden your search depending on what you're looking for. The search works for each armor slot, and you also can add in another search requirement based on one of five playstyles: crafted, mob, PvP, quest and raid. If it's not gear you're looking for, you can search for glyphs, gems or enchants, too. It's pretty handy and can simplify the dilemma in choosing gear - if you have faith in what other players are using. For the skeptics out there, try it out and let us know what you think. Are the results surprising? About what you expected? ...Laughable?

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Earlier we took a look at some the gear design philosophy of Blizzard and saw some armor that was introduced in 3.0 and that will be added in 3.1. We looked at the "Lost Vanquishers" (sans Druid): Rogue, Death Knight, and Mage. Today we are going to check out what the "Lost Protectors" have: Hunter, Shaman, and Warrior. Thanks to MMO-Champion for the screenshots of Ulduar gear and Season 6. More consistent and high resolution imagery will be added once patch 3.1 hits the live realms. Scroll down to see the sets and click the images for larger views. The first three Gladiator's sets of Wrath seem to be just recolorings, but they do seem to be getting more fancy with season 6's Furious Gladiator's sets. Of these three classes, I think hunters have the best looking PvP gear. The green scales on the Furious Gladiator's set look pretty cool. Shaman's shoulders in PvE have always been cool. Some people despised the dungeon set 1 shaman shoulders, but I loved them. When Blizzard had finally added skins in for the end game items so that they looked cooler than twill, it became a great symbol of progress for me. Now, the shaman shoulders are just ridiculously cool. The glowing orbs and meteorites chained to the armor are far more epic than any other shoulders. Hunter and warrior armor is honestly boring to me. It doesn't have as much flair as it should. What do you guys think? Are shaman's shoulders over the top or just epic and which class looks best? Hunter PvP PvE Shaman PvP PvE Warrior PvP PvE

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Allakhazam continues its interview series with with the Project Lore crew this week by conducting an interview with Lylelovett, Project Lore's protection warrior tank, AKA Joshua Brentano. When he isn't busy tanking for Project Lore, Joshua is also the Executive Producer of the hit G4 show, Attack of the Show. Joshua talked with Allakhazam about such topics as tanking, WotLK, and the future of WoW. Check out the interview with Joshua and let us know what you think! Also, don't forget to check out the other interviews with Dorkins, Juggynaut, and DrDark!

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Blizzard has made it no secret that there are some big tanking changes on the horizon in Wrath. On the surface this has all seemed really exciting. There are tons of new spells, abilities, and mechanics all around. They have stated they want all of the tanking classes to be viable raid tanks, meaning that the ability for Paladins and Bears to tank single targets will be greatly improved. On the flip side Warriors and bears are getting some great AOE tanking abilities that were the Paladin’s bread and butter. As I first heard about these developments, I got really excited. As a Tankadin, I was getting the equivalent to last stand, shield wall, and shield slam. Mana problems will be a thing of the past, and during raids I won’t have to justify having a warrior main tank a boss instead of me (apologies to TRG’s warrior MT,  Jato). All these new abilities were incredibly exciting. Here’s a quick summary of the exclusive abilities I have noticed that have now crossed over between classes: Consecration – Both Thunder Clap and Swipe now hit unlimited targets, making them better for AOE Righteous Defense – Taunt and growl now work at range as well Holy Shield – Warriors will now also deal damage on blocks with Damage Shield Last Stand – Lay on Hands cool down has been greatly reduced, making it much more useful. Shield Wall – Divine Protection has been reworked to fill this role. Shield Slam – Hammer of the Righteous is a new skill with a similar effect. There are many more, I'm sure. After the initial excitement died down, it occurred to me: are we all going to be the same? Are we losing class distinctions and individuality? It started to not sit right. I love being able to do things that warriors can’t do. I love being the "go to guy" when you want to beat the Shattered Halls timer by 20 minutes. It’s a great feeling to round up a 12 pull without breaking a sweat. And, I’ll admit, I loved being the underdog when it came to being able to tank the big raid bosses (and loved even more proving my guild wrong when I did). It seems like all this will be gone… I will no longer be a Tankadin, I will just be a tank. Perhaps these changes aren’t so good after all? Now take this all with a grain of salt. I have not played the beta, so this may be all in my head, but I fear I may be dead on. Does anyone have any experience to prove me wrong? Are you as concerned as I am? Or is my concern unwarranted? I can’t say I’m completely sure myself.

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I have spent the last two days poring over the various confirmed changes and future additions to World of Warcraft.  Eyes glassy and tainted with blue, I have finally been able to come up for a breath.  Blizzard Poster Gamnin kept most of us busy during Tuesday's short maintenance by posting an update to the Rogue changes and some new information on the Warrior class.  As with all changes, people are sure to be up in arms about something or other so I will avoid being 'that guy'.

Courtesy of Mick Stephenson

First we will discuss my favorite class, the rogues.  As mentioned in the comments of my previous Rogue post, Tricks of the Trade is the new level 75 ability and has been confirmed by Gamnin.

• NEW - Tricks of the Trade: The current party or raid member becomes the target of your Tricks of the Trade. The threat caused by your next attack and all actions taken for 6 sec afterwards will be transferred to the target. In addition, all damage caused by the target is increased by 15% during this time. 30 sec cooldown.
• Relentless Strikes moved to Tier 1 Subtlety tree and made 5 ranks, 4/8/12/16/20% chance.
• NEW – Overkill (Assassination Tier 7): Abilities used while stealthed and for 6 seconds after breaking stealth cost 10 less energy.
• Hunger for Blood duration raised to 30 seconds.
• Mace spec ignores 3/6/9/12/15% of target’s armor.
• NEW - Blood Poisoning (Combat Tier 9): All physical damage caused to enemies you have poisoned is increased by 1/2%.
• NEW - Filthy Tricks (Subtlety Tier 9): Reduces the cooldown of your Tricks of the Trade and Distract abilities by 5/10 sec.
• Shadowstep will no longer be usable while rooted.

The new abilities and talents sound interesting but choosing a good build seems more difficult than before.  I will reserve my anger and judgments for when we get closer to launch however.  I have never seen a point in A) getting angry over stuff that will likely be changed and B) spending so much time making a build when the trees aren't finalized.  Of course, I just had to end the list with something to piss off the PvPers.

Also of note, is that Blizzard plans to do something about five rogue Tricks of the Trade rotations.  Currently, there is no stacking protection but they are working on some way to avoid the need for it.

The Warrior changes and additions are interesting, just not as lengthy:

• Enraged Regeneration: You regenerate 30% of your total health over 10 sec. This ability consumes all Enrage effects and prevents any from affecting you for the full duration. Must be enraged to use. Cost 15 rage, 3 min cooldown.
• Improved Charge generates 5/10 rage.
• Mace spec ignores 3/6/9/12/15% of target’s armor.
• NEW - Warbringer (Protection Tier 9): Allows Charge to be used in combat.
• Furious Attacks modified to use procs per minute to nullify weapon speed differences.

I like what I heard about Blizzard's take on Shields in WotLK.  The developers hope to make the shield more of a weapon instead of just a defensive tool.  Adding that utility would make them more accurate to how they were used back in the day (see 300).

Oh and Warriors regenerating 30% of their health over 10 seconds...that is gonna be annoying in PvP.

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