Filed under: Hunter, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, News items, Wrath of the Lich King, Rumors

I was listening in on the Twisted Nether Blogcast and heard Nibuca mention that the new Spirit Bear image we reported earlier this week had been identified. Sure enough, I head over to the one place I knew would have the answer, Mania’s Arcania. Sure enough there it was, Mania had a long post giving all the details.

Mania’s Arcania member safrienaer reported that they had found the new spirit beast on the PTR Patch 3.3 in Grizzly Hills, north of Amberpine Lodge. Along with some really cool screenshots, safrienaer went on to describe that at the moment Arcturis doesn’t have any special sounds. However, Mania thinks, and I have to agree, that we’ll probably see some polishing of the graphic with some special glowing effects and sounds before the completion of the testing of Patch 3.3 on the PTR.

On a final note, Mania did some research on Wikipedia and found that it seems our new Spirit Beast might be a reference to Arcturus Mengsk from StarCraft.

Anyways, I’m excited about the prospect of taming Arcturis. My only problem will be stable slots and having to pick a new Elvis related name that matches his personality.

Patch 3.3 PTR: Meet Arcturis, the newest and coolest Spirit Beast originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Undead, Druid, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, News items, PvP, Classes, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King, (Arena PvP) Blood Sport, Battlegrounds, Arena

Ahh, lovely Radiohead. The entirety of Scotch Mist (which is In Rainbows played live) will be our listening music, as I expect today’s article to be somewhat…lengthy. Starting out with “Weird Fishes” is a nice touch — you gotta love Radiohead’s set order diversity. By the way, I’m going to continue supporting the Blood Sport column with listening music, due to overwhelming positive response. If you have any suggestions for songs, please let me know in the comments below!

Instead of talking about minor changes, I’m going to try to only hit the major ones here, as this is a giant patch. If you think I skipped something important, please let me know via the comments below and I’ll reply.

Today, we’ll be covering pet resilience, the Will of the Forsaken nerf, death knight, and druid changes, and what they hold for arena combatants. Expect the other classes and item/glyph changes soon! You can find all about Patch 3.3 here.

Check out what the last major patch of WotLK has for gladiators and challengers alike after the break!

Continue reading Blood Sport: Patch 3.3, part I

Blood Sport: Patch 3.3, part I originally appeared on WoW.com on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Patches, Blizzard, Wrath of the Lich King

Because of all the chaos (from switched providers to government approval) on China’s version of World of Warcraft, they haven’t actually had a chance to release the Wrath expansion over there yet. They were planning to bring it out ASAP, but that obviously never worked out. But we hear now, finally, that the wait is almost over. They are still going through content checks, and Netease (WoW’s new provider over there) says it has some more work to do, but at this point they’re aiming for a mid-November release.

This doesn’t mean much for us in the rest of the world — and before you commenters mention goldsellers, know that most “Chinese goldfarmers” actually play on NA/EU servers anyway, and have been doing so even with the outage overseas. It does, however, mean that China’s guilds and playerbase at large will finally have access to all of the content we’ve enjoyed for almost a year (the expansion was released in North America and Europe last November 13th — remember that?), including death knights, the new Naxxramas, and all of the other Northrend content. The release should be a nice bonus for Netease as well — they’ve been working hard to try and get the game up to date, and releasing the current expansion should help bring in a nice group of new customers.

Wrath expected in China in mid-November originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Patches, Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King

Daelo has posted this week’s raid testing schedule for the patch 3.3 PTR, and we’re going to get more looks at what the Icecrown raid has in store for us:

US Servers
Monday, October 26 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT - Festergut
Wednesday, October 28 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT - Icecrown Gunship Battle
Thursday, October 29 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT - Sindragosa
Friday, October 30 at 7PM EDT / 4 PM PDT - Valithria Dreamwalker

EU Servers
Tuesday, October 27 at 19:30 CEST - Lord Marrowgar
Wednesday, October 28 at 19:30 CEST - Lady Deathwhisper
Thursday, October 29 at 19:30 CEST - Professor Putricide
Friday, October 30 at 19:30 CEST - Rotface

A little bit of analysis about the schedule after the break.

Continue reading Patch 3.3 PTR: Raid testing schedule this week

Patch 3.3 PTR: Raid testing schedule this week originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Breakfast topics, Instances, Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King

Interesting weekend for me: My schedule is such that I can’t really do weekend raids with my Alliance guild, but with fall coming the crummy weather seems to have led to a renaissance for my Horde side play, and suddenly I found myself running Onyxia and TotC 10 on Malfurion in my finest Tauren warrior self. (Tauren warriors: great race/class combo or the greatest race/class combo? The world may never know.) Since I’m fairly familiar with the fights in both cases, it seemed natural enough to explain them for people who hadn’t done them.

And then I realized that, without really even paying attention, I’d sort of taken the job over entirely. It just seemed like what I should do: even when I forgot to mention an element of a fight like Gormok’s spell lock, I just found myself calmly explaining things in a voice that, frankly, I didn’t really even recognize. It was as if I was comfortable telling people what to do. Almost without realizing it I’d started telling people what to do in a raid, and they were doing it. The whole thing was somewhat surreal all told.

So how about you? Ever found yourself leading a raid, an instance, or just a charge across AV without really expecting it? Or are you always in charge in WoW? Are you a leader, a follower, or a bit of both?

Breakfast Topic: When I left you, I was but the learner originally appeared on WoW.com on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Patches, Buffs, Wrath of the Lich King

One of the big UI changes coming in patch 3.3 is an option to Consolidate Buffs. It appears that when the feature is enabled, specific short term buffs like Replenishment and longer duration buffs like Gift of the Wild or Arcane Brilliance will be tucked aside and hidden in a buff box. When you mouse over it, the box will expand and display the buffs within. In other words, we can get more real estate back!

On the other hand, certain important buffs that may be critical to the operation of your class will always be displayed. For example, Art of War procs on my retribution paladin will always show up so I know when to slam Exorcism. (Don’t hate on me because I have ret paladin now!) Heroism (or Bloodlust) and other similar cooldowns will be shown as well as range limited buffs like totems and paladin auras.

From the debuff side of things, there’s another option called Castable Debuffs. When it’s enabled, all it will do is show debuffs that you apply. My elemental shaman will throw Flame Shocks and that’s all that will appear. I won’t see a shadow priest’s Misery or a rogue’s Rupture. It’s an interesting way to cut down on screen clutter.

Patch 3.3 PTR: Consolidate buffs and debuffs in the default UI originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 01:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Patches, Items, Wrath of the Lich King

Continue reading Patch 3.3 PTR: Shadowmourne spell details

Patch 3.3 PTR: Shadowmourne spell details originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 01:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Wrath of the Lich King

Every week Matthew Rossi slaves in his kitchen over a hot stove, primarily because he needs something to nosh on while composing The Care and Feeding of Warriors, WoW.com’s column about warriors. Also, he’s chained to the stove. No no, don’t ask, it’s a long story.

Cooldowns. Those abilities that provide a sizable benefit to a character when used, but cannot simply be used over and over again due to a time-based limitation on their use. As far as I know, every class has a few. For warriors, being a two role hybrid, cooldowns can be further broken up into tanking and DPS related, with some overlap (the famous and oft-neglected Retaliation comes to mind as a cooldown that can be used in either role to some extent).and it’s often the most basic and yet most easily overlooked aspect of warrior gameplay.

While for a DPS, cooldowns are useful and even can be said to be required for top performance, for a tanking warrior’s cooldowns only grow in importance the more cutting edge the content becomes. Wrath of the Lich King stands out, a year or so into its development cycle, as having shifted tanking away from a process of gearing to either survive or completely avoid big spiky damage in the form of critical hits/crushing blows to a process of gearing to survive big spiky damage through stamina and, more often, cooldown usage. Whether it be Gormok the Impaler’s Impale, Onyxia’s combination of Wing Buffet, Cleave and Fire Breath, or Mimiron’s Plasma Blast, you as a tank will often be called to do anything in your power to make healing you through massive amounts of damage easier. Sometimes, it won’t be enough.

So let’s talk about cooldowns.

Continue reading The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Cooldowns

The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Cooldowns originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Guilds, Instances, Bosses, Wrath of the Lich King

Excited to jump in on the Icecrown Gunship battle today on the PTR? Too bad — Daelo has posted on the forums that due to instance server issues, today’s testing has been canceled. He posted that on the EU forums, so we’re not sure if that means it’s also canceled on the North American realms, but we’ll presume so. If we hear otherwise (as this is the PTR, all testing and data is subject to change at a moment’s notice), we’ll let you know.

As for what this means for the testing cycle, probably nothing at all — delays and changes are pretty standard for the test realm, and even as they said in the original announcement, bosses can go up and down whenever the devs want. I do think we will see the gunship battle tested on the PTR at some point, though — it seems like one of the more complicated encounters in the instance, and Blizzard will surely want to put it under a microscope sometime before the patch goes live.

Icecrown Gunship testing cancelled originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Priest, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King

I cleared out the tail end of my afternoon in the hopes of getting a glimpse at the latest raid boss to be tested in the patch 3.3 PTR. Festergut was open for testing on North American servers while the European servers had Rotface. There were some issues with Rotface earlier in the day (namely that the 25 man version of Rotface had health that was meant for the 10 man). Anyway, I managed to get in a few attempts on Festergut here while playing on my priest.

First, let’s talk trash.

Continue reading Patch 3.3 PTR: Festergut impressions

Patch 3.3 PTR: Festergut impressions originally appeared on WoW.com on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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