Totem Talk: All about Healing Tide Totem

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how.

This week, we're going to talk a whole lot about Healing Tide Totem. Why are we going to spend that time discussing this resto shaman healing talent? Well, because like with everything else lately, there is a hot debate springing up about it. This has to do, of course, with the upcoming patch 5.4 that is currently being tested on the PTR. Again the information we have on this is subject to change, but we can still talk about it until things go live.

Since the start of the expansion, there has been a love hate relationship with HTT. The debate started day one with if this talent was mandatory for restoration shaman and how much of our healing truly relied on it. After just a little bit into the expansion's first tier of raid content, the debate intensified and has been going on ever since.

A rising star, or a falling shaman?

The beginning of the expansion is always a time to see what our new goodies will bring us and what type of impact they will have. From the get go HTT was a curiosity. The talent seemed strong and was often times compared to a druids Tranquility of a priest Divine Hymn, and it gained the ability to utilize our mastery Deep Healing. It gained about 48% of our spellpower, and while that was great, it still didn't compare to other raid cooldowns that would get 85% or higher of the caster's spellpower. The downfall was that basically as other healers got gear, and as players learned not to stand in bad, the cooldown would slowly dwindle in power. The problem was, well, it hasn't quite worked out like that. A considerable amount of our healing throughput has wound up tied to HTT, especially at the beginning.

Personally I know the very first time I used HTT, the other healers pretty much had a cow when they saw how much healing it did by itself during Feng the Accursed. That's been pretty much the curse of this cooldown from the start. It does so much of our healing by itself simply because there are so many fights where everyone is broken down into much smaller groups or simply can't stack on top of each other and take advantage of Spirit Link Totem or Healing Rain like we did throughout Cataclysm. That's been one of the largest complaints among the respectful punch of our healing brethren, that so much of our healing is on this cooldown. There are fights, like Tortos, where HTT is counting for almost 35% of the healing we do simply because of how spread out everyone is. This wound up making the talent pretty much mandatory for that tier choice compared to the other two.

This of course presents an issue on two fronts. First, if the healing cooldown doesn't scale quite as well as other cooldowns, it will eventually fall out of favor and become much less useful. Second, with so much of our healing on certain fights deriving from that, what does that have to say about our healing longevity as a class when compared to other healers?

Will this change?

This is a difficult question to answer some times, but overall, it's not a great place to be where a cooldown like that becomes something you rely on so much for certain fights. We can already see that there are things in the works to make this not the case, or at least attempt to. The new Glyph of Chaining is an attempt to make our beloved Chain Heal more viable in fights were we are going to be spread out, which from all appearances will be happening again in the coming tier of raiding. The new Glyph of Riptide is going down the same road by lessening the initial blow of the instant healing effect. The idea will be that we can start to rely on them a little bit more on those fights where people are spread out.

The second part of this equation is a redesign of the other talents from that tier of choices. Conductivity has been updated so that casting Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave, Healing Surge and Chain Heal will increase the duration of Healing Rain by 1 second. Conductivity has been one of those talents that has pretty much been written off since the start of the expansion, and this is an attempt to make it more viable as an option when compared to HTT. Will this change be enough to knock HTT out of the spot as a mandatory talent? I'm not entirely convinced. While increasing the duration of HR is nice, it is going to depend on how much stacking we're going to be able to do in the next tier of raiding, and the jury is still out on that. Personally, I don't think anything is going to knock HTT out of it's place in our toolkit anytime soon, which is good and bad.

What about buffing HTT?

This is another one of those topics that has been debated. Half of the shaman healing community would love to see HTT buffed so that we can continue to use it competitively in the tiers of content to come. The other half think that doing so will do nothing but hurt us in the long run by making us so much more dependent on the cooldown for our healing throughput. In patch 5.3's release, a lot of other raid healer cooldowns got buffed yet our HTT did not get any increase. In a Twitter exchange, everyone's favorite crustacean Gregg "Ghostcrawler" Street stated that buffing HTT would only make it more mandatory for resto and that SLT was our raid cooldown. Later that same day however, patch 5.4 ptr notes showed that Healing Tide Totem was getting buffed to heal for 50% more. As it stands on the ptr, HTT will also gain 72% of our spellpower on use. That's a significant bump and puts it much more in line with other raid healing cooldowns.

In the end, I still have a love-hate relationship with the cooldown. I love it because I have a big soft spot for totems in general and I'll always argue for more and cooler totems for us to use. I hate it because I hate feeling like everything we do is tied up in a single cooldown cast every 3 minutes. It points out that we have some severe deficiencies when it comes to fights where we can't keep our raid grouped up. We tend to have to work very hard to keep up.While I love excelling at group healing fights, and I'm not opposed to rolling up my sleeves and putting in some hard work, I hate feeling pigeon holed. My hope is that shaman healing will get another close looking over in the very near future. I still love being a shaman healer, I think we're still a great healing class, but I feel like we have the potential to be so much better. Totem Talk: Restoration lends you advice on healing groups, DK tanks and heroics and mana concerns in today's endgame -- or take a break and look back at the rise of the resto shaman. Happy healing, and may your mana be plentiful! Tags: ancestral guidance, AncestralGuidance, conductivity, earthliving weapon, EarthlivingWeapon, featured, guide-to-shamans, healing tide totem, HealingTideTotem, patch 5.4, Patch5.4, resto, Resto-Shaman, restoration, restoration-shaman, restoration-shaman-column, restoration-shaman-totem-talk, shaman-guide, shaman-healing, shaman-info, shaman-restoration-column, shaman-talents, wow-shaman, wow-shaman-info

Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk

View the original article here

Breakfast Topic: Tweeting about WoW

We like talking about WoW, which is probably how we got here in the first place. But when we aren't on WoW Insider talking about WoW, sometimes it just means we're talking about WoW somewhere else. And frequently that somewhere else is Twitter, where you won't just find us on @WoWInsider, but also personal accounts. But of course we need people to talk to, so it's a good thing a bunch of Blizzard employees are on active on the microblogging site, too.

And, of course, there are plenty of you lovely people there with us, too. So tell us, readers: do you tweet about the World of Warcraft? And because we're always interested in new people to follow, do you have any favorite WoW-related accounts that you follow? Tags: featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, twitter, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

Filed under: Breakfast Topics

View the original article here

Around Azeroth: We drink to forget about whatever is in that hamburger

"All those poor goblins and gnomes stuck on the speedbarge in the middle of Thousand Needles," laments submitter Arugadh of The Brotherhood of Iron on Wyrmrest Accord (US-H). "It used to be a big, empty salt flat in the middle of a big, empty desert, and now it's a huge, boring barge in the middle of a big, empty lake in the middle of nowhere. Of course they all drink themselves blind and bubbly." But Arugadh, weren't you getting wasted there just last Friday? "Yeah, I spend a lot of time in that bar myself. I'm a dwarf. What do you expect?"
Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm. Tags: around azeroth, around-azeroth, AroundAzeroth, featured, screen-shots, screenshots, world-of-warcraft-pictures, world-of-warcraft-screenshots, wow-screen-shots, wow-screenshot, wow-screenshots, wow-ss

Filed under: Around Azeroth

View the original article here

Two great things about the contemporary ret paladin

Patch 5.3 has turned out to be a great time to be a ret paladin. Well, in my opinion it's always a great time to be a ret paladin, but this new patch and the changes it brought with it really drive the point home. Granted, the only change we saw was a buff to our weapon-based damage via Sword of Light, which, while being a welcome boost to our DPS, isn't necessarily the most earth-shattering, game-changing thing in all of Azeroth. Still though, it opens some doors and allows us to be more competitive in the DPS game.

I have to admit, my inspiration for this column came from reading Matt Rossi's warrior column, The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Survival and the modern warrior. As I was reading through the piece, I found myself unconsciously caressing my keybind for Divine Shield, no doubt a realization of how blessed we paladins are when it comes to self-preservation mechanics and abilities. Some of the troubles that Matt detailed I have either sidestepped or easily handled with our generous toolbox, and his angst has given me a newfound appreciation for the veritable arsenal of useful spells at our disposal.

This week I'll be touching on a couple of our newer abilities that have proven time and time again to be so valuable and effective that I can't imagine playing a paladin without them.

Unbreakable Spirit

Immunities are powerful things. Divine Shield is a spell that provokes very heated responses from anyone who has faced a paladin in PvP combat and draws the envy of nearly every class for its incalculable uses in PvE content. Even though our damage output is cut in half for the duration of the spell, being immune to all forms of damage for eight seconds is incredible.

The devs, however, thought that eight seconds of damage immunity wasn't enough and gave us the wonderful talent Unbreakable Spirit. In short, US allows you to reduce your Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Lay on Hands cooldowns by 50% simply by spending holy power. As ret we're usually bursting at the seems with the resource, and spending it is in our best interest regardless of whether we spec into US or not, so this talent basically allows us to have DS available every two and a half minutes.

Now, I know what you're thinking: if you're in a position to need an immunity every two and a half minutes, you must be doing something wrong, right? Well, there's another use for our bubble that Rossi discusses in his article -- preventing debuff applications.

Say you're just starting out on heroic Jin'rokh and your healers are having a hard time finding enough magic dispels to cleanse Ionization from everyone in the raid. With DS, you can prevent Ionization from even touching you. Not only will this help your healers immensely, but you can also remain in the damage-boosting puddle for its entire duration. Thanks to US, we can do this on the first and third puddle phases, meaning you will most likely only need a single dispel for the entire encounter.

Hell, toss in a /cancelaura macro for good measure and you can ensure that you only lose a couple GCDs of potential damage on the boss; I like to use a shift modifier macro so I don't accidentally clear my bubble when I inevitably spam my keybind:

/cancelaura [mod:shift] Divine Shield;
/cast Divine Shield

Mass Exorcism

I didn't truly "get into" Mass Exorcism until 5.2, at the behest of a friend. I was quite hesitant to sacrifice the ranged nature of Exorcism for some AoE damage, but she insisted that I glyph Mass Exo for a week and get used to it. Reluctantly I grabbed the glyph off the auction house and scribbled it into my spellbook. Three raid days later I was as pleased as could be at the boost to my DPS, but I think the larger change occurred in my perspective.

One encounter for which I thought I needed an at-range Exo was Lei Shen. The tanks kite the boss from corner to corner, adds pop up in different quadrants during transitional phases, and winds push you every which way near the end of the fight -- all of these seemed to beg for more ranged abilities to be able to handle them. As it turns out, though, I was thinking of it the wrong way. Instead of seeing myself forced out of melee range, saying, "Well, if I have to be out here I should do as much DPS as I can until I can get back," what I really should have been thinking was, "How can I get back into melee range as quickly as possible?"

We are a melee class; as much as some of us want shockadins to be real and viable, the bulk of retribution's damage comes from hitting things really hard with a two-handed weapon. Therefore, instead of focusing on how to maximize DPS during those few moments when I was punted away from a boss, I should have been trying to find ways to minimize the time I spent away from the orbit of my foe.

Of course, encounters with only one target do not quite necessitate the use of Mass Exo, but I have found that unglyphing it only to avoid the cleave (on Primordius or Twin Consorts, for example) helps me focus on what's important.

I bring these points up not to taunt warriors or other ill-equipped classes and specs, but as a roundabout way of saying that I can sympathize. These abilities didn't exist before Mists, which to me shows that things can and will change. Exorcism hit like a wet noodle in Wrath, and there were many, many instances where using your Art of War proc to cast a Flash of Light instead would be a better use of your time. Look at Exorcism now: its damage is second only to Hammer of Wrath, and when glyphed it can be an amazing source of AoE DPS.

As such, Matt, my advice to you is "be vocal, yet patient." Just don't get us nerfed, okay? The Light and How to Swing It teaches you the ins and outs of retribution paladins, from Ret 101 and how to gem, enchant and reforge your retadin, to essential ret pally addons. Tags: featured, guide-to-paladins, guide-to-pallies, guide-to-pallys, mass-exorcism, Paladin-Glyphs, paladin-guide, paladin-info, paladin-talents, pally-guide, pally-info, pally-talents, retribution, retribution-paladin-the-light-and-how-to-swing-it, unbreakable-spirit, wow-paladin, wow-paladin-info, wow-paladins, wow-pally, wow-pally-info

Filed under: Paladin, (Paladin) The Light and How to Swing It

View the original article here

Editorial: Am I the only one who doesn't care about a delayed video game?

Maybe it's just me, but the news last night that Blizzard delayed Titan a bit has me ... well, not caring. At all. As in I can think of a hundred other things I'd rather do than sit around and listen to a lot of people complain about how it's vaporware or whatever else.

I don't mean to be combative here, but I want to raise the point: why do things like this get so much attention in the gaming press? Even for an unannounced title, for which there has been zero official confirmation on any of its details, people seem to be quite cranky about the delay. I can't really wrap my head around it.

Is it the fact that Blizzard has been working on this for at least five years? I remember doing Saturn Six Insider three years ago as a little spoof on it all (Saturn's 6th moon is Titan). Since then Blizzard has said nothing new about the project -- this delay only means that they're continuing to work on it and are building it up to be something large and grand. It doesn't mean anything else.

Are people annoyed because they're excited about it and are let down by not being able to hear details? No matter how you look at it the interest in things like this isn't a positive for the industry as a whole, and moreso just takes up our intellectual bandwidth of more pressing and influential gaming news. The indie scene is doing amazing things right now, and a new console war is quickly heating up. That's interesting.

A game that hasn't even been announced yet being delayed isn't. Or at least that's what I like to tell myself. Tags: featured, titan

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

View the original article here

What new players need to know about WoW patches

If World of Warcraft had but one holiday, it would be Patch Day: the glorious Tuesday (or Wednesday) in which the WoW servers go down for maintenance but come back online brimming with new, unexplored content. If you're new to World of Warcraft, or MMOs in general, you may not entirely understand all the fuss the community makes over patches. So just what is a patch? Why are they so important? And how can you get your hands on one? We'll do our best to explain.

What is a WoW patch?
Did you know we're playing version 5 of World of Warcraft right now? It's true: Version 1.1 was World of Warcraft's launch client and every expansion since has bumped the version number up a full number, while each patch release is a decimal place. The original game went up to patch 1.12 (the 1.1 launch client and 11 patches after), Burning Crusade (2.0) had a scant 4 patches, Wrath of the Lich King (3.0) had 3, Cataclysm (4.0) had 3, and Mists of Pandaria (5.0) is about to see the release of its 3rd patch, patch 5.3. These days, patches are coming more quickly than ever and we have no idea how many patches to expect before the next expansion arrives.

Unlike patches you might be familiar with from other software or other (non MMO) games, which might fix bugs or address problems, WoW's patches add content -- sometimes a lot of it! You might see new skills, new quests, new zones, and new dungeons rolled out in a patch. The patches are best compared to downloadable content (DLC) that you might find for other games you play. However, in WoW if you want to keep playing, you have to download and install the latest patch in order to connect to the World of Warcraft servers -- they aren't optional parts of the game experience.

What's the difference between an expansion and a patch?
Expansions are big: patches are small. A patch might add a new zone, but an expansion will probably add a new continent. Think of patches as what you're paying your subscription fees for: in addition to keeping the servers running and the lights on at Blizzard HQ, you're also paying Blizzard for new content. Expansions are much larger chunks of content which have their own, additional fee for purchase.

Why all the fuss over patches?
Blizzard's patches for WoW include can include lots of gameplay changes -- and not every player will agree that all of them are good. Before a patch rolls out, players are eager for news of how their class will fare in the coming patch: will they be buffed? Will they be nerfed? Blizzard makes calls like this based on overall game balance rather than a particular player's wants, so with each patch you'll find a lot of discussion, speculation, cheering, and complaining. And since WoW players love to chat about their favorite pastime, you won't always find this stopping once the patch comes out. What is the PTR?
You've probably heard the term "PTR" tossed around in advance of a new WoW patch. The PTR is the Public Test Realm, where Blizzard releases early versions of patches for players to test out. How long content is on the PTR and when it arrives on the PTR is entirely up to Blizzard: when they have new content ready for players to see, they'll open the PTR and when the patch officially launches they'll close it again. Though a lot of pre-patch chatter is based off content on the PTR, nothing about a patch is for sure until Blizzard finalizes it for the live realms. The patch data up on the PTR can -- and usually does! -- change between its initial roll out on the PTR and its final release on the live servers.

For more on the PTR -- or if you want to do some play testing yourself -- check out Blizzard's PTR FAQ.

Just when is patch day?
Patches will always be applied during WoW's weekly maintenance, which is on Tuesday for North American and Australian realms and Wednesday for European realms. Smaller hotfixes, which fix bugs or other problems, are sometimes applied between patches and, if the problem the hotfix is addressing is serious enough, may go out at any time instead of waiting for maintenance.

Following Blizzard's philosophy of only releasing content when it's done, patches don't come out on any specific schedule. However, Blizzard usually gives a few days' warning before a new patch is expected to land. In the case of patch 5.3, they told us on Friday that the patch would be rolling out the following Tuesday and Wednesday. How do I get the new patch?
When you fire up World of Warcraft's launcher, one of the things it does before letting you in to the game is check to see if there's any patch data to download. If there is, it will start downloading it immediately -- usually, it will start before the patch's official release, downloading anything Blizzard has finalized so you won't have a huge download on patch day.

However, there will still be downloading on patch day: when you fire up the client, it will prevent you from logging in until the patch is downloaded. There's a certain amount of essential data it has to download and install before you can play (the download bar will appear red while it downloads necessary components). Once it's grabbed essential data, the bar will turn yellow and you can log in while it finishes downloading in the background: though you may not have a flawless gameplay experience. When it's completely finished downloading, the bar will appear green and you're good to go without any problems.

We typically find the downloader to work perfectly, but if you're having problems, check out Blizzard's patch troubleshooting information.

Now you know all you need to know to celebrate this week's patch day holiday! Just because you're a newbie doesn't mean you can't bring your A-game to World of Warcraft! Visit the WoW Rookie Guide for links to everything you need to get started as a new player, from the seven things every newbie ought to know to how to get started as a healer or as a tank. Tags: featured, guide, how-to-play-wow, new-to-world-of-warcraft, noob-guide, patch, patch-5.3, patch-day, patches, ptr, rookie-guide, world-of-warcraft-guide, world-of-warcraft-help, world-of-warcraft-noobs, world-of-warcraft-rookies, wow-guide, wow-help, wow-noob-guide, wow-noobs, wow-patch, wow-patch-5.3, wow-patch-day, wow-patches, wow-ptr, wow-to-play-world-of-warcraft

Filed under: WoW Rookie

View the original article here

What we know so far about Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

We're going to keep this post updated throughout the day with all the latest HearthStone information. Here's what we know so far.

General Information
HearthStone is a new digital collectible card game (CCG) that takes place in the Warcraft universe.HearthStone is free to play.It's set for release this year. The beta will happen this summer.You can sign up for the beta now over at HearthStone's site.It will initially be playable on the Mac and PC. iPad version to follow soon (and not Blizzard soon, but reality soon).PC and iPad version are playable now at PAX East.Blizzard is looking at the possibility of future platforms (in response to the Android comments), but development is focused on PC, Mac, and iPad right now.

Cards and Decks
Initial launch will contain 300 cards.You'll be able earn booster packs (just like MT:G booster packs). You can also buy them.The price Blizzard is throwing around for the booster packs right now is $1/pack.Each pack comes with five random cards. Guaranteed to get a rare or better in each pack.Chance also to upgrade to a "golden" version of the same card (like MT:G foil cards).You'll be able to build your own decks, but also can let the game build it for you.Two classifications of cards: basic and expert.Multiple rarity levels of expert cards: common, rare, epic, and legendary.You will be able to disenchant cards you don't want into Arcane Dust, then use that Arcane Dust to craft cards you do want.Anything buy in the beta will be credited back to your live version of the game at equal value in the form of an unopened pack.Playing the Game The game is built around 1v1 match.Battle.net is used to set up the matches, you also can play against an AI (normal and expert mode).You earn medals every week for winning matches.You play the game as one of nine "heroes" of the Warcraft universe. Like a mage, druid, rogue, warlock, etc...Anyone who is familiar with MT:G or the WoW TCG should be able to pick this up pretty quickly, it looks like.Some cards demonstrated had AoE damage.Play field looks pretty standard: your hand, discard pile, health, mana, draw pile, battle field.In the screenshots and gameplay footage you start off with 30 health.
Other Notes We don't know yet if cards are going to be tradeable.
Developing... Tags: breaking, hearthstone

Filed under: News items, Hearthstone Insider

View the original article here

About ElvUI

The only thing I can think of is using a shift modifier macro for each spell.

#showtooltip
/use [mod:shift] Survival Instincts; Barkskin

What that will do is show barkskin on bar you place it on and when pressing shift it shows survival Instincts.  I don't think this is what you wanted, but I'm not sure if Elv can do what you ask.  

You can try messing with the visibility states under each action bar.  Though I don't know how to make it work the way you want.

View the original article here

A Question About Tier Set bonuses

Hi,

Having never raided before this expansion I have a question that maybe a bit noobish.....

If I have a T14 2 set bonus, can I also have a T15 2 set bonus?

Thanks for any answers

Gulfv

View the original article here

A Question About Tier Set bonuses

Hi,

Having never raided before this expansion I have a question that maybe a bit noobish.....

If I have a T14 2 set bonus, can I also have a T15 2 set bonus?

Thanks for any answers

Gulfv

View the original article here

A Question about Tanking

Having a group of people you know to learn is a lot better than doing randoms.  If you go into a random and just plain can't tank or know what you are doing it is a MAJOR pain.  As for leveling up that is up to you though I agree you won't learn a whole lot as tanking at max level is different without the same cooldwons and abilites.

If you are going to give tanking a go then get some valor gear and do a few LFR's and change your toons spec to tank spec after the fight and give a second roll for a tank piece till 5.3 when you can just select the spec you would like to get gear for.  Don't just find some random greens and call yourself a tank.  An addon or two geared towards tanking will help as well.  Tidy plates with threatplates is nice so you can see that you have agro on the mobs and Tauntmaster can be helpful for taunting something off of the rest of the group.

And until you have figured tanking out let people know. . . don't just go in and start fighting and then loose agro and let a mage tank something.  Repair bills add up and they will either leave or you will get kicked, even if you just have to make a macro to tell the group you are new to tanking and learning will help.  If I know someone is having a rough time or going to I lay off the DPS a bit so they can get agro easier, otherwise I charge in when the tank does and coun't till three till I pop sweeping strikes and bladestorm. . . after that good luck on getting agro if you aern't ready for it.

View the original article here

About ElvUI

The only thing I can think of is using a shift modifier macro for each spell.

#showtooltip
/use [mod:shift] Survival Instincts; Barkskin

What that will do is show barkskin on bar you place it on and when pressing shift it shows survival Instincts.  I don't think this is what you wanted, but I'm not sure if Elv can do what you ask.  

You can try messing with the visibility states under each action bar.  Though I don't know how to make it work the way you want.

View the original article here

The Queue: Wait, what about that quest

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) just remembered why she hates leveling alts.

Late last night, I finally got my Alliance druid to level 70. I did it the proper way, finishing it up in Outland before moving to Northrend. And then I was really, really excited because I could fly as a really fast bird, instead of the poky-slow bird. After staring at my book, which told me to visit my trainer, conversing with a variety of trainers who had nothing to teach me and then finally consulting Wowhead in order to figure out that I needed to visit a flight trainer, not a class trainer, I was on my way.

That is, until I visited the flight trainer and realized Swift Flight Form was going to cost me 5k. After staring forlornly at the paltry 1.7k on my alt, I logged off. Whatever happened to just murdering a big bird in an instance? Come on.

Edymnion asked:

Do you think we will get more than one set of new dailies this expansion? Blizzard seems to be wanting us to use LFR more for gearing up as opposed to constantly releasing new tiers of dungeons like they did in Cataclysm. I'm sure we'll get at least one more set of dungeons (like the End of Time dungeon set in Cata, or the ICC 5 mans in Wrath), but do you think we'll see an intermediary set like the Zuls this time around?

I think you're asking if we're going to get more than one set of new dungeons rather than dailies? If so, I honestly have no idea -- I suspect we'll see another set of dungeons at least, since each expansion has added a few that weren't in the original release of said expansion so far. I don't know how many dungeons exactly, but I imagine we'll see a few. Whether they're released all in one patch, or over a couple of patches ... well, I have no idea!

csaltman1 asked:

Wait, does the sheildwall item increase rep for my main too? I thought it only increased rep for my alts. Could I have been using it for my own rep all this time?

Absolutely. As soon as you hit revered with a faction, get the commendation. It'll increase your rep gain for every character on your account, including your main -- which makes that grind to exalted far more bearable than ever before.

JuliusWolf asked:

Since they are removing item upgrading in 5.2 do you think it is worthwhile to upgrade what we can before that happens? I don't raid so my Raid Finder Claw's of Shek'zeer are likely the best weapon I will be getting for a while, should I upgrade them now before the feature disappears?

Yes. Upgrade everything you can. Even if it's not on par with the things that drop in whatever iteration of LFR we are getting with the new raid, it'll still last you for quite some time. After all, you aren't going to get every piece of new gear your heart desires in one run. Besides, what else are you going to spend all that valor on? Upgrade away!

Revynn asked:

I just got my legendary gem and started on the next phase. This is the last available part of the questions until 5.2, correct? No rush?

Yep! Although I have to warn you now -- you're going to be collecting 6k valor points for Wrathion before you end that portion of the chain. That's a minimum of six weeks of valor capping. So there literally is no rush, because it's impossible to rush through it.

@RyanStormrage asked via Twitter:

what do you think of blizzard nerfing blade flurry to balance then giving monks the same ability?

Honey, I play Assassination. I am perfectly fine with them adjusting Blade Flurry because it means I don't have to sit there and fiddle and fidget and switch around to Combat just because one particular boss out of however many happens to have a lot of adds, or responds really well to cleave damage. Basically, I played Combat back in Burning Crusade, I switched to Assassination in early Wrath, and between then and now Combat has changed so much that I absolutely loathe it.

So if they make it so that I don't feel like it is an absolute necessity to play a spec that I hate just to do more damage, I am perfectly fine with that. Giving it to monks, however ... Let's just say that I don't particularly care for monks, and leave it at that*.

@wrenworkman asked via Twitter

In your opinion what century/decade would you place WoW's tech level?

Honestly, I don't think there's a real answer to that question. Some things seem fairly low-technology in Azeroth, but at the same time we've got naaru ships that basically warp through space from one point to another. I mean ... it's so varied that there's no real way to pin it down to just one time period. But that's fantasy for you.

@sergel92 asked via Twitter:

Given the current rate of the xpac, how many patches do you think Mists will have? Will it be 3,4,5, or more?

I'd say more than that. Honestly, with the speed that patches are coming out, I'm thinking we may see seven or eight before the expansion is over. Not every patch will have substantial huge things in it -- I expect it'll be a little more like vanilla. Patches in vanilla were varied. Sometimes we got new content, sometimes we just got cool stuff like weather added to the game. There were a lot of patches in vanilla.

*Get your grubby leather-wearing paws off my agi gear, impostors.

Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em! Tags: featured, guide, qa, question-and-answer, wow-answers, wow-daily-answers, wow-daily-questions, wow-guide, wow-player-questions, wow-q-and-a, wow-questions

Filed under: The Queue

View the original article here

Back in my day, it was all about patch 1.2

Patch 5.2 this, patch 5.2 that! Back in my day, we had real patches. Or rather, we had the very first content patch for the game -- patch 1.2. Daily quest hubs? Dailies didn't even exist back then. No, you got a dungeon -- a single dungeon -- and you liked it. And there was none of this silly heroic nonsense, either. All we needed was someplace to run in and smash a few centaur and we were perfectly happy.

But seriously, it's actually kind of odd to think about, because I remember that very first patch with utter clarity. It was still 2004, less than a month after the game itself had been released -- and I had just gotten the hang of playing a druid, more or less. Well, I figured out what talent points were for, anyway. Hint: It wasn't just the game congratulating me for leveling up.

I was such a noob back then.

In the early days of Warcraft, I had a leveling partner who traveled with me -- a warrior to complement my druid. Druids at that point weren't really viable at anything but healing. The feral tree was a nightmare for leveling, and leveling was incredibly slow. So slow, in fact, that it was far easier for me to heal my warrior friend while they pulled massive packs of this and that, happily cleaving down anything that stood in their path.

But somewhere along the line, they got ahead of me in the leveling process. And I remember feeling incredibly stupid as I leveled, because I just wasn't as good at it as the warrior was. It wasn't my fault really, the class was still hobbling along at that point. So I limped along, trying to keep up and despaired when I realized said warrior was now a good six levels ahead of me.

When they announced patch 1.2, I had no idea what the heck a patch actually was. WoW was my second MMO -- the first being City of Heroes. I liked being a superhero, but I didn't get a chance to get really absorbed into the game by the time I got a beta key for WoW, so I'd never experienced a patch cycle before. What I managed to glean was that a patch was coming, I didn't need to purchase anything else to get it, and there was going to be a new dungeon in the patch called Maraudon.

I wanted to do Maraudon more than anything. When the patch was delivered, I still wasn't high enough level to do it. I remember logging on when the patch came out, eager to see what all this new stuff we'd gotten was about, and discovering to my horror that my warrior friend was already in Maraudon, without me. In a way, it was kind of a beginning of the end of that particular friendship -- not long after hitting level 60, the warrior either quit the game or re-rolled elsewhere, I'm not certain. Regardless, I was left to my own devices at that point.

I didn't see Maraudon in patch 1.2. A few minor patches rolled out before I stepped into the zone with a few friends I'd manage to harass into going with me. But I do remember stepping from dusty desert into underground grotto with mixed feelings on the subject, sad that my leveling partner was no longer at my side. That feeling of sadness was completely wiped away by the time we got to the waterfalls just before the final boss, lost somewhere in a sea of staring at scenery and exclamations of "My god, you can see the sky outside if you look up! Look at that!"

By today's standards, the addition of Maraudon might seem pretty weird. It wasn't an end game dungeon -- it was smack in the middle of the leveling process. It would be like having a patch for Mists of Pandaria that only introduced a level 86 dungeon and a couple of class changes. But back in 2004, when we were on the brink of discovering that this was a really good game, anything shiny and new was appreciated.

For a first content patch, 1.2 wasn't really much to behold. But there was still a lot of excitement surrounding it, because it was the first patch. We didn't know how many we would get. We didn't know what was coming next. There was no talk of expansions, no talk of raids, no talk of daily quests or valor points or anything we see today. There was just a new dungeon waiting to be explored, mysterious and unknown to everyone. In the end, I think it was that little thrill of the unknown that appealed so much to everyone.

That, and being able to finally turn off the graphic for my cloak and hat. Gear was ugly back then, guys.

Sometimes I wonder, between bouts of PTR testing and patch cycles, if we'll ever get that sense of wonder back again. I kind of miss it. I'm curious though -- what was your first patch? When was it, and what did you get really excited about? Leave a comment and let us know! And if you're looking for more information on patch 1.2, be sure to check out what WoW Archivist had to say.

Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Tags: cenarius, centaur, elune, kodo, malorne, maraudon, patch-1.2, patches-of-yesteryear, theradras, therazane, world-of-warcraft-patch1.2, wow-2004, wow-old-patches, wow-patch-1.2, zaetar

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion

View the original article here

Breakfast Topic: Do you talk about WoW at work?

It's been a little while since we've really talked about this subject. Do you talk about WoW at work? More than just cuddling around the coffee with tales of raids and loot, do you even let on to you coworkers that you've fought the MMO fantastic?

With several million players, mainstream exposure, and even celebrity endorsement, WoW has been the game of the day. And with farms and dragons and hobbits, not to mention untold numbers of superhero movies, even the idea of being a geek isn't quite the mark of shame it once was.

With this kind of pop culture acceptance, have you fessed up to your mouse-turning ways? I've connected with plenty of folks from coast to coast over our beloved Azeroth, and I'm eager to hear how many of you chat with coworkers about the game. Tags: career, featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, work, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

Filed under: Breakfast Topics

View the original article here