Patch 5.4 PTR: Mounts, cloaks and glyphs

Wowhead's dataminers have unearthed a whole lot of new items with the latest build to hit the PTR servers, as Perculia posted earlier. First up, there's the Legendary capes, with their procs in place, seven in total, with different stats for different classes and specializations. You can also see the 3D models of the Legendary capes over on Wowhead, and I have to say, as someone who usually leaves their cloak turned off, these are very pretty indeed.

There are also new mounts, the Vicious Skeletal Warhorse, as shown in the header image, and the Vicious Warsaber. These may well be new mounts to purchase with honor points, conquest points, or may require a certain rating, or similar, but however you get them we absolutely agree with Perculia when she says they sound PvP-centric.

What's more, Corrupted Garrosh now has a glowy new look, a vast improvement on his old one, and appears to be less bulked out with all the sha influence.

Instead, he appears to be surrounded with a faint purple glow, whilst looking far more like his former self, but it is possible that we might see the very purple hulked Garrosh make a return, this could be an interim look for him while he's in the process of being corrupted.

There are also several new glyphs, but these are all marked with NYI, meaning Not Yet Implemented, so these could count for nothing at all. Some of them do look pretty great, though, even if several are cosmetic effects like surrounding you in feathers if you have Slow Fall active, or reducing the size of a Water Elemental. Do check out the full post at Wowhead!Tags: breaking, new-mounts, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-mounts, patch-5.4-ptr

Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria

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Patch 5.4 PTR Datamine: 100% XP Buff via Microtransaction

Datamining should always, always be taken with a pinch of salt. But, when Perculia of Wowhead dropped WoW Insider a line with one particular object from the latest PTR build, we had to let you all know about it.

Enduring Elixir of Wisdom is an elixir that increases experience gained from killing monsters and completing quests by 100%. Wow, that's quite the buff, right? But not really stop the presses news? Wait until you hear the rest. It's currently listed as coming from the "5.4 In-Game Store". Yes, that's right, at the moment all signs point to this being purchased via a microtransaction.

Now, we didn't even know about the in-game store. Maybe they mean the battle.net shop, maybe they don't, but this is a controversial step by Blizzard if the datamining turns out to be accurate. Of course, leveling isn't exactly an onerous task, but nonetheless, exchanging what might be real money for faster leveling would add considerable convenience.

Do remember that this is datamining. It might not be accurate, it might be a placeholder, it might come to nothing at all.

Tags: breaking, in-game-store, microtransaction, xp-buff

Filed under: Blizzard

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Patch 5.4 PTR: More spoileriffic sound files

Adriacraft is at it again. The very second a new build goes up, Stevan is on the audio like an inappropriate simile, just to get it here for you as soon as possible. As ever, there are spoilers after the break, so if you don't want spoilers, then I heartily suggest you don't click the break, don't read the comments, and don't watch the video. Instead, contemplate my shaman as she rests her weary head in one of Azeroth's many field hospitals.
This set of sound files includes Wrathion audio, but also audio from several of the new raid bosses. As ever this is datamined information, so do take it all with a pinch of salt, but there are definitely interesting snippets in there!
Do check back for more, and check out Adriacraft's YouTube channel for all the latest patch video! Tags: breaking, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-datamining, patch-5.4-ptr, patch-5.4-sound

Filed under: Mists of Pandaria

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The mount you'll engi-need in Patch 5.4

We posted last week briefly about the Sky Golem, the redesigned engineering mount that will allow you to pick flowers as you fly around. And we posted a picture of the Sky Claw, but now, there is video of this mount in all its glory. And guess what, Engineering just became the best profession. Again.

It's all a little confusing, really, as we were convinced that this would look like the sky claw we'd all seen before, but this is far, far better. It's effectively a shredder suit, that you put on, and fly around in. There are four different colors available, as you can see from Adriacraft's video above, and all of them look pretty great.

This is crafted by engineers, at a cost of 30 Living Steel, as well as 30 Jard's Peculiar Energy Source. These are currently created on a daily cooldown, so it's going to take engineers a while to get this mount built. However, there is no requirement for Engineering skill to use it, at present at least, so this mount can presumably be sold on the Auction House! I am leveling my engineering just to build this. And you should too.

Tags: breaking, engineering, jards-peculiar-energy-source, mount, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-ptr, sky-claw, sky-golem

Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria

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Patch 5.4 PTR: Tier 16 Warrior, Priest and Hunter gear set videos [Updated]

Our friends over at Adriacraft have been at it again, this time digging up video of both the priest and the warrior Tier 16 gear sets, with the hunter set to follow! What do you think of the sets? We at WoW Insider absolutely loved the tier 16 priest set, the clean lines and colors as well as the shoulders, particularly on the female, really got a lot of good feedback from our work chat! However, we weren't so keen on the warrior set, but some of us still really liked it.

The warrior set is lurking just after the break, and it should be noted that the belt is missing, thanks to missing textures, but you can definitely get the full idea of the set. We thought it was interesting how the chest is missing the kidney areas on both the male and female models, but what do you think of the sets?

Update: Adriacraft has now added the Tier 16 hunter set video, you can see it after the break! You may notice it looks a little different to hunter sets elsewhere, that's because Adriacraft managed to fix a bug which was placing the shoulders inside the body of the hunter before making the video!

If you want to keep up to date with video of all the latest PTR patches do head over to Adriacraft's YouTube and subscribe to his channel!

Tags: breaking, featured, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-gear, patch-5.4-priest-set, patch-5.4-ptr, patch-5.4-raid, patch-5.4-warrior-set

Filed under: Mists of Pandaria

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Patch 5.4 PTR: More spoiler-ridden sound files

Stiven from Adriacraft has returned, literally minutes after the latest PTR build was launched, with a bundle of exciting new sound files. These are seriously spoiler-laden, as ever, so if you don't want patch 5.4 spoilers, for any element of the new content, we heartily suggest not looking at the content after the cut. Also, don't read the rest of the article, don't listen to the sound files, and don't read the comments! Instead, look at this picture of the Ring of Valor, and bemoan (or not) its departure from the game.

If you don't mind, or indeed, actively want spoilers, read on!

Tags: baine, breaking, gamon, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-ptr, patch-5.4-raid, sound-files, sylvanas-windrunner, tyrande-whisperwind

Filed under: Mists of Pandaria

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Patch 5.4 PTR: Tier 16 Warrior, Priest and Hunter gear set videos [Updated]

Our friends over at Adriacraft have been at it again, this time digging up video of both the priest and the warrior Tier 16 gear sets, with the hunter set to follow! What do you think of the sets? We at WoW Insider absolutely loved the tier 16 priest set, the clean lines and colors as well as the shoulders, particularly on the female, really got a lot of good feedback from our work chat! However, we weren't so keen on the warrior set, but some of us still really liked it.

The warrior set is lurking just after the break, and it should be noted that the belt is missing, thanks to missing textures, but you can definitely get the full idea of the set. We thought it was interesting how the chest is missing the kidney areas on both the male and female models, but what do you think of the sets?

Update: Adriacraft has now added the Tier 16 hunter set video, you can see it after the break! You may notice it looks a little different to hunter sets elsewhere, that's because Adriacraft managed to fix a bug which was placing the shoulders inside the body of the hunter before making the video!

If you want to keep up to date with video of all the latest PTR patches do head over to Adriacraft's YouTube and subscribe to his channel!

Tags: breaking, featured, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-gear, patch-5.4-priest-set, patch-5.4-ptr, patch-5.4-raid, patch-5.4-warrior-set

Filed under: Mists of Pandaria

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Patch 5.3 hotfixes for June 24

A new batch of hotfixes for patch 5.3 has been released on the official blog. While the list itself is pretty small, there's one big change in there that ought to make pet collectors very, very happy. In addition, a few changes have been made to Throne of Thunder encounters:
RygariusJune 24

Classes Shaman Enhancement Stormblast's damage has been normalized.Unleash Wind's damage has been normalized.Quests Going Bearback: Players should no longer be able to take Icefang outside of the intended quest area.Seeds of Discord: Players attempting to talk to Karr'gonn should now properly receive a dialogue option to distract them.Creatures Ice Caller Briatha, Heretic Bodyguard, and Heretic Emissary can no longer be killed.Pet Battles Battle Pets Qiraji Guardling's spawn rate has been greatly increased.Raids, Dungeons and Scenarios Throne of Thunder Horridon Hex of Confusion can no longer cause players to critically hit themselves.The Soft Hands achievement should now be properly awarded to Priests in Spirit of Redemption form as well as players that are dead.Lei Shen Mages who cast Alter Time while under the effects of Discharged Energy will no longer incorrectly retain the debuff.
Tags: featured, hotfixes, patch-5.3, patch-5.3-hotfixes, wow-hotfix, wow-hotfixes

Filed under: Hotfixes, Mists of Pandaria

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Lichborne: Patch 5.4 patch note analysis for death knights

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

The patch 5.4 PTR has seen its first round of updates, and with those updates has come a handful of death knight changes. We had most of our earth-shattering changes in patch 5.2, so while there's nothing completely major here, there are some welcome surprises and good quality of life changes, mostly focusing on making it easier for tanks, both in general and blood tanks in specific, to keep threat. Today, we'll take a look at the patch 5.4 patch notes as they stand at this writing. As always, this is the PTR, so class balances may change pretty drastically before the final patch goes live. Official Patch 5.4 PTR Patch NotesClasses

All taunt type abilities now increase all threat generated against the target while the taunt is active by 200%.
Vengeance gains from being critically hit have been halved.

Death Knight

General

Icebound Fortitude no longer costs Runic Power.
Riposte is a new passive ability learned at level 76. When the Death Knight dodges or parries any attack, they gain 50% of their Parry and Dodge as additional bonus to Critical Strike for 20 seconds.

Talents

Anti-Magic Zone has been redesigned. The talent now reduces magic damage taken in the area-of-effect by 40% for 3 seconds, there is no longer a cap on total damage absorbed, and the ability no longer scales with strength.
Death Siphon had its damage increased by 10%.
Plague Leech now tries to convert 2 fully-depleted runes (up from 1) into a Death Rune based on specialization.

Blood: Restores 1 Frost Rune, 1 Unholy Rune
Frost: 1 Frost Rune, 1 Unholy Rune
Unholy: 1 Blood Rune, 1 Frost Rune

Glyphs

Glyph of Enduring Infection now reduces damage dealt by diseases by 15% (down from a 30% reduction).
Glyph of Mind Freeze now reduces the cooldown of Mind Freeze by 1 second, and raises its cost by 10 Runic Power (down from 2 seconds and 20 Runic Power).
Glyph of Outbreak now causes Outbreak to cost 30 Runic Power (down from 40).

Blood

Dancing Rune Weapon no longer costs Runic Power.
Sanguine Fortitude no longer reduces the cost of Icebound Fortitude.

Unholy

Master of Ghouls now reduces the cooldown of Raise Dead by 60 seconds.

Blood gets more threatening

Only a few weeks after I speculated on the possibility of making DPS stats more useful for tanks, Blizzard has played with my expectations, as it is their wont to do, and turned them on their heads. Now, instead of DPS stats being more useful to tank, tank stats have been made more useful for DPSing with Riposte.

It's not a straight-up boost, since you first have to dodge or parry, and then, and only then, will get a temporary boost to your critical strike chance based on 50% of your Dodge and Parry. This causes a lot of interesting hypothetical situations. If you need more threat, it will probably still be more use to get the more dependable hit and expertise caps, but you now have the option to stack more parry and dodge in order to boost both threat and defense, and use defensive trinkets or cool downs that increase your dodge or parry chance as makeshift DPS cooldowns. The one downside here is that the critical strike boost is calculated off of ratings, so it appears it will be ignoring such mechanics as strength-to-parry conversions, which could make it less powerful than one would first think, as much of our parry comes from that conversion and from runeforging.

Blizzard's stated reason for doing this appears to be giving death knights and warriors a way to get DPS from mitigation stats, as paladins can already get both from haste, while druids and monks can get both from critical strike. That said, If there is a downside here, it is that death knights have traditionally prioritized avoidance far below mastery because of its antagonistic relationship with said stat. This, in fact, may be Blizzard's attempt to get avoidance back on the map for death knight tanks. Whether it's enough or not remains to be seen, especially as, again, the boost will ignore much of the parry we have in the first place. That said, much like warriors, we may see a change to make Riposte's critical strike chance more desirable in an upcoming build.

Blizzard also provided another buff that may be called a DPS increase. Now that Dancing Rune Weapon needs no runic power, that's 60 more runic power one can use on more Rune Strikes. It also makes it easier to deploy the cooldown at a moment's notice when you need some extra defense. Since it provides a boost to parry and dodge chance, it should also mean more chances to trigger Riposte.

Of course, the other change arguably somewhat negates the need for a DPS increase for tanks. Taunt abilities (in our case, Dark Command and Death Grip) will now also provide a 200% threat increase while active. This means you can use the taunt to build extra threat even if the mob is already on you, which should make single target fights a little easier to handle, at least, as while as helping to assure that you can save that DPS who refuses to stop burning the mob even as it eats his face off.

Talents get bandaids

The Anti-Magic Zone change has proven controversial, but it may arguably be a buff. With the absorption limit gone, this means it can more easily soak up large amounts of damage from sustained magic damage effects in a raid, as long as said effects occur within a 3 second window. Arguably, the main thing that changed is the exact situation it should be used in, leaving it simply powerful in different situations than it was before.

Death Siphon gets another damage buff, but the main problem remains the same. It's just not as powerful as using our main strikes, and the fact that it costs a death rune means its awkward to fit into your existing rotation, especially for two-handed frost death knights who have to split up an Obliterate to properly use Death Siphon. Death Pact still remains the clear winner of this tier. Death Siphon has always been rather situational, and this buff won't really change that.

Plague Leech's change seems to acknowledge the death rune problem in the same way Death Siphon's change does not. Plague Leech, while technically a DPS boost if used properly, is often avoided by your average death knight because it is difficult and annoying to use properly. By tailoring the skill to refresh the exact runes you need to unleash your signature 2-rune strike, it makes it at least a little more convenient to use, by assuring you'll get back the two runes you need most. Keep in mind, though, that you'll still be left disease-less, so once those runes refresh, you'll still need to have a disease application method ready to go, and Plague Leech will preclude the use of at least one of those methods, Unholy Blight. This is a change that won't really solve the base issue with Plague Leech, that it's too annoying to use, and my feelings about it really remain the same as they did before patch 5.4.

Glyphs and other changes

Icebound Fortitude is now free to use by default, which is definitely welcome news for DPS. While Icebound Fortitude has always been a survival option, now it's one that doesn't reduce our DPS by forcing us to give up valuable runic power. All death knight DPS should already have this ability hotkeyed, but now it's even easier justify pushing the key.

The glyphs don't really change anything major, especially for PvE. I've argued in the past that Outbreak should have no cooldown by default, but the need for runic power to activate it on the glyph isn't even a question of losing DPS, it's a question of needing to reapply diseases at a critical time or at the start of a battle and having no runic power to do it. 10 runic power shaved off the top won't change that reality. Learn the ropes of endgame play with WoW Insider's DK 101 guide. Make yourself invaluable to your raid group with Mind Freeze and other interrupts, gear up with pre-heroic DPS gear or pre-heroic tank gear, and plot your path to tier 11/valor point DPS gear. Tags: anti-magic-zone, blood-death-knight-lichborne, dancing-rune-weapon, dark-command, death-grip, death-knight-blood-lichborne, death-knight-frost-lichborne, death-knight-guide, death-knight-info, death-knight-patch-5.4-changes, death-knight-ptr-changes, death-knight-talents, death-knight-unholy-lichborne, death-siphon, dk-guide, dk-info, dk-talents, featured, frost-death-knight-lichborne, glyph-of-enduring-infection, glyph-of-mind-freeze, glyph-of-outbreak, guide-to-death-knights, icebound-fortitude, master-of-ghouls, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-death-knight-changes, patch-5.4-ptr, plague-leech, riposte, sanguine-fortitude, taunt, unholy-death-knight-lichborne, wow-death-knight, wow-dk

Filed under: Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne

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Blood Pact: Patch 5.4 has a few ups but mostly downs

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill's raid sadly realized that the changes to KJC mean there will be no more air-bound soulwells.

Well. It's been a hell of a week on the PTR for warlocks, hasn't it? A few of the original patch notes have been changed for the better again in response to player feedback on the forums.

Don't get me wrong, Patch 5.4 is still largely a depressing bunch of nerfs for warlocks. But let's go over the changes and make sure we have everything straight. The usual disclaimer of "things can and may change" still applies to all of these patch notes.

Kil'jaeden's Cunning: Reverted, but still nerfed

Kil'jaeden's Cunning (KJC) is going back to being a passive! There is no movement penalty, but the talent only allows casting while moving for the cast-time filler spells of each spec: Malefic Grasp, Shadow Bolt, and Incinerate.

All specs still have major spells that we would really like to keep moving while casting for. Affliction appreciates being able to cast Malefic Grasp while moving, but would like the same for Drain Soul, since Drain Soul is basically just the execute version of Malefic Grasp. Demonology appreciates the ability to cast Shadow Bolt while moving, but casting Soul Fire below 20% they might like as well, for the same reasons affliction wants Drain Soul movement back. Destruction is lucky Shadowburn is instant, but that doesn't blind them from the fact that Chaos Bolt is rendered standstill.

PvP-oriented warlocks are also concerned about no more Fear on the move, but the changes to level 30 talents will help that. Howl of Terror is no longer a talent, but baseline for all warlocks and still learned at level 30. PvP warlocks will rejoice, as they can now choose an ability like Shadowfury without missing a melee peel like Howl of Terror, and either a tier-2 talent or Howl itself can act as an interrupt cover for our main CC. In Howl's place, our familiar conal snare is back under the name Demonic Breath.

However, the most recent change to KJC is only a compromise. Being able to cast a filler on the move alleviates some of the damage nerf from the talent change, but Blizzard still wants to encourage smart positioning and smart movement for casters. As Xelnath has pointed out on his game design blog, movement is the most basic counter for all DPS. Melee are limited by range to the target while casters are limited to only some abilities on the move. Being able to fire off enough abilities at ranged for melee or being able to cast everything all the time for casters just leads to too many encounters becoming tank-and-spank or reduced to a "many adds, handle it" style rather than interesting movement obstacles.

Fel Flame: Reverted, but still buffed

While PvE players were not enthused by a non-instant Fel Flame but similarly not really bummed, PvP warlocks were screaming about the crappiness of a cast-time Fel Flame. Fel Flame is a dual-spell school, which means if it got spell-locked via an interrupt, it would lock warlocks out of absolutely everything, except for a PvP trinket. That's a really bad idea for what was at the time the only movement option outside of activating Kil'jaeden's Cunning.

So Fel Flame is back to being instant -- hooray! Fel Flame is retaining its damage buff (up by 13%), however, to help again with the limited moving spells. The base mana cost was reduced by 2%, to help with frequent green fire jabs at the enemy. Fel Flame is also back to its Cataclysmic plain direct damage life: it will not refresh or extend any DoTs.

Ghostcrawler provided some developer aims on Twitter regarding Fel Flame:

As long as locks don't become backpedaling FF spamming machines, we think this change should work.

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) June 18, 2013

We're going to try keeping Fel Flame as an instant, slightly buffed, with no dot refeshing. Intent wasn't to nerf FF on top of nerfing KJC.

- Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) June 18, 2013

This is a buff or a nerf depending on what a warlock is trying to do. For destruction, this is an all-around buff. Affliction PvE likes this change, but affliction PvP will miss the ability to shardlessly keep DoTs up on a target while moving. Demonology is mostly OK with this change until they realize that this means Void Ray will not refresh Corruption anymore.

But overall, between Kil'jaeden's Cunning and Fel Flame, this is a victory for player feedback in the forums.

What about the other level 90 talents?

Mannoroth's Fury (MF) is still an activated talent for Patch 5.4. The only change is now that the ability will also buff the main AoEs of each spec by 100% in addition to area coverage for 10 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown.

This still isn't that much of a nerf, except possibly a minor nerf to PvP. Destro 'locks like to place Rain of Fire as stealth detection but also as a slight counter to pillar-humping enemies. The bigger the area, the more the stealth detection or area of the pillar backside that the 'lock can cover. The warlock can still do this, just not cover as much area as often as she could previously. Archimonde's Vengeance (AV) is next on the list for changes, according to an update by CM Lore. This is important because most warlocks feel that the talent is super weak. The damage done by the talent is negligible, even if the warlock times the ability during a major burst of unavoidable incoming damage. For example, if I tried to time AV for the Quills ability on 25-man heroic Ji-Kun, it would only give me about 440k damage done over 6 minutes. That is utterly pathetic for a 2-minute cooldown, of the final talent tier no less. My doomguard does almost twice that amount of damage in only the minute that he's out.

The other problem for Archimonde's Vengeance is that it shares the current problem of tanky-type Vengeance, where it encourages players to intentionally stand in really unpleasant floor effects in order to get more oomph out of the ability. Ghostcrawler tweeted that this method of boosting damage will not work for both tanky and warlock Vengeances in Patch 5.4. However, warlocks remain skeptical of the talent's usefulness until we see some major damage buffs to it. Almost no one takes the talent in endgame content anymore because it's very weak compared to the other two choices.

It goes downhill from here

Unfortunately, the warlock section of the Patch 5.4 PTR notes is full of nerfs. It's not shaping up to be a very fun patch for warlocks.

Demonic Gateway has been nerfed heavily in its group use. The debuff one receives after stepping through a gate on live realms is 15-seconds long, but Patch 5.4 wants to extend the debuff to a full minute. This would definitely impede Gateway's use on some encounters like Iron Qon that allow a portion of the raid to skip a phase's mechanic. Personally, I would rather a compromise of 30 seconds; that' s the cooldown for Demonic Circle: Teleport, so it would put Gateway at the level of merely a party-only teleport option for others and only a threat reduction for warlocks. However, warlocks are about the self-gain, and we're worried about what this will do to the usual strategy for the Kanrethad green fire fight, where Demonic Gateway is used very prominently to drop threat. Fortunately, the threat drop is part of the the Demonic Gateway debuff, so a warlock will remain threat-debuffed for the full 60 seconds. It's unclear whether this just affects the threat lost at the time of moving through the Gateway or also ongoing threat as the warlock continues to deal damage.

We already know that Rain of Fire received a nerf to ember generation, but we weren't sure how exactly. The patch notes say that Rain of Fire will have a reduced chance to generate embers, specifically. This might be like the chance-on-a-chance tweak to the tier 16 2-piece set bonus where it's a chance on a crit for Conflagrate, when a critical strike itself is a chance. (By the way, the 4-piece set bonus was nerfed for affliction and demonology where the percent chances were reduced to 8% instead of 20%.)

On the survivability front, Fel Armor is losing its 10% damage reduction in line with the similar moonkin and shadow priest stance nerfs. On the other hand, that's nothing compared to the Soul Leech nerf, which took the tier 1 talent down from a shield the size of 100% of a warlock's health to a maximum of 15%. I don't really care if it activates off a Shadowburn now; that is one sick nerf.

What is on the PTR right now?

Mannoroth's Fury has the AoE damage boost and Fel Flame is instant. The Demonic Gateway gives you a minute-long debuff, Fel Armor lost its flat damage reduction, and Soul Leech caps out at 15% of my health.

However -- Kil'jaeden's Cunning is still a 10-second duration on a 1-minute cooldown. Perhaps "soon" the newest changes to Kil'jaeden's Cunning will be available on the PTR for testing. Blood Pact is a weekly column detailing DOTs, demons and all the dastardly deeds done by warlocks. We'll coach you in the fine art of staying alive, help pick the best target for Dark Intent, and steer you through tier 13 set bonuses. Tags: archimondes-vengeance, chaos-bolt, demonic-gateway, drain-soul, featured, fel-armor, guide-to-locks, guide-to-warlocks, haunt, incinerate, kiljaedens-cunning, lock-guide, lock-info, lock-talents, malefic-grasp, mannoroths-fury, patch-5.4, ptr, rain-of-fire, shadow-bolt, shadowburn, soul-fire, soul-leech, unstable-affliction, void-ray, warlock-guide, warlock-info, warlock-talents, wow-lock, wow-lock-info, wow-locks, wow-warlock, wow-warlock-info, wow-warlocks

Filed under: Warlock, (Warlock) Blood Pact, Mists of Pandaria

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Patch 5.4 PTR: The new Arena Tie-Break system

WoW Insider reported last week on a pretty crazy debuff that a player had found on the patch 5.4 PTR, The Crowd Chose You!!!. At the time, we were very sure to clarify that, as Brian Holinka mentioned on Twitter, this was not a tie-breaker in itself, rather it was, and is, a match-ender. It is the mechanic by which a match is ended once a tie-break system has decided who should emerge victorious. Rather like boxing, where not every fight can end with a knockout, and the judges use specific criteria to judge the winner, the tie-break system is in place to ascertain who should be awarded a victory, and give them this buff to put that victory in place.

As I discussed in a Blood Sport a while back, the important element here was always the mechanic within the game that decided who would get the buff. For clarity, the current mechanic is very simple: if you are unable to kill the entire of the other team before the timer runs out, you will draw, and both sides will lose rating. The arena system currently favors a knockout, and refuses to recognize any other type of win, to continue our boxing analogy. But this is all set to change in patch 5.4, so let's take a look at the patch note excerpt that clarifies the new system.

Battlegrounds and Arenas

Arenas For Arena matches lasting longer than 15 minutes, one of the teams will receive a buff called "The Crowd Chose You" that increases damage, critical strike chance, stealth detection, and reduces damage taken. The buff is awarded based on the following criteria. Team with the largest number of players alive.Team that brought an enemy player closest to death (lowest health).
So, what do you think of this new system? It seems like the cut-off time of 15 minutes is logical, after all most matches last less time than that, or turn into tiresome ongoing turtle matches which would benefit from this sort of thing. Overall, the two criteria seem to make sense, even if, as a PvP healer myself, they are rather galling. It feels somewhat like an exercise in healer skill to successfully turtle out a match, but I wholeheartedly agree it should not be encouraged.

I have long thought that the team with the largest number of players alive should win a match, even if the opposing team wasn't able to completely wipe the others off the map, but of course that is a matter of philosophy, and not everyone will agree with me. As far as the second criterion, bringing an enemy player to the lowest health, as a healer this is, again, a little rankling, as part of the fun of playing a healer is to save your team-mate from those sorts of dire situations. But nonetheless, if one team gets a player to 5% and the other team gets a player to 10%, the first team came closer to a kill than the second.

Playing the system, not the game

My only concern with this system is the potential for it to be gamed. Of course, with any tie-break system, there is that possibility, but it seems possible that players could work out ways to play to the system, rather than playing as normal. Thanks to its design, I think the system largely avoids any pitfalls in this particular area, but there is the potential for 3-healer teams to troll rather effectively, particularly if they somehow manage to get an opponent down to, say, 50% health, while never letting any of their team drop below 80%. The numbers are hypothetical and purely illustrative, and this would be quite a feat, but perhaps something worthy of consideration. Classes such as blood DKs, too, in tandem with two healers in 3v3, could likely game this system fairly effectively thanks to their relatively high (for a tank) damage output.

This system will also need to be communicated very, very effectively, both via blogs and patch notes, and perhaps even in-game. As someone who makes it their mission to encourage new players to step into PvP, I am aware that it is possible that newer PvPers won't have heard of this system, and will wonder why they're suddenly one-shotted by a resto shaman's lightning bolt. Because of the one-shot mechanic, this will need to be abundantly clear to prevent it from discouraging, and indeed confusing players. Do you want to capture flags, invade cities, attack towers, and dominate the enemy for your faction? Do you dream of riding your War Bear with pride? We'll steer you to victory with secrets of Battlegrounds and Arena, prepping you with proven addons and keybindings that win! Send questions or comments to olivia@wowinsider.com. Tags: arena, arena-guide, arena-strats, arena-tie-break, arena-tips, arenas, featured, guide, how-to-play-battlegrounds, how-to-pvp, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-arena, patch-5.4-pvp, pvp-guide, the-crowd-chose-you, tie-break, tiebreak, wow-arena, wow-arena-guide, wow-guide

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Patch 5.3 hotfixes for June 21

Another round of hotfixes for patch 5.3 were released earlier today to the official site. Once again, the list is short and sweet, with a few adjustments to a Throne of Thunder raid achievement, and a welcome adjustment for those pursuing Challenge Modes. Rygarius
Raids, Dungeons and Scenarios Throne of Thunder Ji-Kun The Golden Egg can now only be passed to other players.The Soft Hands achievement should now be properly awarded to Priests in Spirit of Redemption form as well as players that are dead.Dungeons Resetting a Challenge Mode will now reset the cooldowns for Invisibility and Lesser Invisibility Potions.Items Xan'tish's Flute now should properly only able to be used once every 5 minutes and cannot be used while the character is dead.Isle of Thunder Fixed an issue where players were sometimes unable to use incantations to summon bosses.
Tags: featured, hotfixes, patch-5.3, patch-5.3-hotfixes, wow-hotfix, wow-hotfixes

Filed under: Hotfixes, Mists of Pandaria

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Breakfast Topic: Do you PvP in patch 5.3?

For those of you who aren't aware, patch 5.3, which we're in right now on live servers, brought about some huge changes to PvP gear. Basically, the key stat you used to gear for in PvP, Resilience, was taken off gear and made baseline for everyone. There's now no real need for PvP gear to get started in PvP, you can just use your PvE gear. And sure, you won't hit as hard, PvP Power means that PvP gear is still stronger, but you can definitely get started.

So I'm wondering whether you have. Have these changes encouraged you to start PvP? Are you considering it now, where you weren't before? Have you tried at all? Or are you still adamant that you won't PvP? Maybe you don't enjoy PvP for some other reason, and nothing on earth would get you to try it. Maybe you dropped out of the Legendary just because of those two battlegrounds. Whatever your take on this, particularly in my position as WoW Insider's PvP writer, I'm really interested to hear if the patch 5.3 changes have had any impact at all on your PvP habits!

Tags: featured, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, patch-5.3-pvp, pvp, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

Filed under: Breakfast Topics

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Patch 5.4 PTR patch notes updated for June 20

An update list of patch notes for the 5.4 PTR has just been released on the official blog. The notes include a mega list of changes for various classes, as well as tweaks and additions to battlegrounds, pet battles and more.Every taunt ability now increases all threat generated against the target by 200% while the taunt is active.Those who participate in PvP Pet Battles should happily note that round timers will get progressively shorter for a player who takes more than 15 seconds to issue a command during their turn.Any battle pet that could be rewarded from a Throne of Thunder boss in LFR will now be able to be won from a bonus roll as well.You can see the full list of patch notes at the official site, but if you'd just like a list of the new changes, follow after the break for a consolidated list.
RygariusGeneral

Classes All taunt type abilities now increase all threat generated against the target while the taunt is active by 200%.Death Knight

General Icebound Fortitude no longer costs Runic Power.Riposte is a new passive ability learned at level 76. When the Death Knight dodges or parries any attack, they gain 50% of their Parry and Dodge as additional bonus to Critical Strike for 20 seconds.Talents Anti-Magic Zone has been redesigned. The talent now reduces magic damage taken in the area-of-effect by 40% for 3 seconds, there is no longer a cap on total damage absorbed, and the ability no longer scales with strength.Death Siphon had its damage increased by 10%.Plague Leech now tries to convert 2 fully-depleted runes (up from 1) into a Death Rune based on specialization. Blood: Restores 1 Frost Rune, 1 Unholy RuneFrost: 1 Frost Rune, 1 Unholy RuneUnholy: 1 Blood Rune, 1 Frost RuneGlyphs Glyph of Enduring Infection now reduces damage dealt by diseases by 15% (down from a 30% reduction).Glyph of Mind Freeze now reduces the cooldown of Mind Freeze by 1 second, and raises its cost by 10 Runic Power (down from 2 seconds and 20 Runic Power).Glyph of Outbreak now causes Outbreak to cost 30 Runic Power (down from 40).
Blood Sanguine Fortitude no longer reduces the cost of Icebound Fortitude.Druid

General Cyclone no longer has a 20-second cooldown for Feral Druids.Faerie Fire now has a duration of 20 seconds while in PvP combat (down from 40 seconds).Innervate now causes the target to gain mana equal to 50% of the casting Druid's Spirit every second for 10 seconds. The total mana gained from this ability can never be less than 8% of the casting Druid's maximum mana, and the amount gained is unaffected by Mana Tide Totem.Talents Feral: Increases the amount healed by Healing Touch by 20%. Casting Healing Touch increases the damage for the Druid's next two melee abilities by 25%. causes the Druid's next Rip to deal 15% increased damage.Guardian: Increases the amount healed by Healing Touch by 20%. Mangle (Bear) critical strikes have a 20% chance to make the next Healing Touch or Rebirth instant, free, and castable in all forms. Instant cast version of Healing Touch now benefits from Attack Power instead of Spell Power.Force of Nature Treant summoned by the Feral version of this talent will now cast Entangling Roots instead of Bash.Soul of the Forest has been partially redesigned to make it more attractive to Balance, Guardian, and Restoration Druids. Balance: Wrath, Starfire, and Starsurge casts have a 8% chance to cause Astral Communion to grant 100 Lunar Power or Solar Power instead of activating the next Eclipse.Glyphs Glyph of Ferocious Bite now causes Ferocious Bite to heal the Druid for 2% of their maximum health for each 10 Energy used (up from 1%).Glyph of the Master Shapeshifter now reduces the mana cost of all shapeshifts by 100% (up from 90%).Glyph of Pounce now increases the range of Pounce by 8 yards (up from 3 yards).Glyph of Skull Bash now increases the duration of Skull Bash's interrupt by 2 seconds, and increasing the cooldown by 5 seconds (down from a 4 second interrupt and 10 second increase to cooldown).Balance Moonkin Form now increases the Druid's armor by 60%, but no longer reduces all damage taken by 15%.Feral Predatory Swiftness no longer has a chance to make Cyclone instant, free, and castable in all forms.Restoration Living Seed effects can now stack, up to 50% of the casting Druid's maximum health.Hunter

General Hunter's Mark now has a duration of 20 seconds while in PvP combat (down from 30 seconds).Readiness now finishes the cooldowns on Rapid Fire, Feign Death, Deterrence, Disengage, and Camouflage when activated (was all Hunter abilities with a base cooldown of less than 5 minutes).Revive Pet no longer requires the Hunter to have line-of-sight to their pet.Talents Narrow Escape's root effect is now a nature spell (was a physical spell).Spirit Bond now regenerates 3% of total health every 2 seconds while the Hunter's pet is active (up from 2%).Wyvern Sting now has a range of 40 yards (up from 35 yards).Glyphs Glyph of Mend Pet now has a 100% chance of cleansing 1 Curse, Disease, Magic or Poison effect from the Hunter's pet on each tick (up from 50% chance).Glyph of No Escape now increases the ranged critical strike chance against targets affected by the Hunter's Freezing Trap by 100% (up from 20% chance).Survival Explosive Trap no longer shares a cooldown with Black Arrow but can no longer activate Lock and Load.Mage

Talents Frost Bomb now deals 70% damage to players (up from 60%).Living Bomb now deals 85% damage to players (up from 70%).Nether Tempest now deals 85% damage to players (up from 70%).Temporal Shield now also reduces damage taken by 15% while active in addition to existing effects.Glyphs Glyph of Blink now increases distance travelled with the Blink spell by 8 yards (up from 5 yards).Glyph of Remove Curse now increases the damage dealt by 15% after successfully removing a curse (up from 10%).Glyph of Spellsteal now heals the Mage for 5% of their maximum health after successfully stealing a spell (up from 3%).Frost Mastery: Frostburn has been redesigned. Fingers of Frost now increases the damage of Ice Lance by an additional 2%, Brain Freeze increases the damage of the instant cast Frostfire Bolt by 2%, and damage done by the Mage's Water Elemental is increased by 2%.Monk

Talents Chi Brew will now also generate 3 stacks of Brew/Teas based on the Monk's specialization. (Brewmaster: Elusive Brew, Mistweaver: Mana Tea, Windwalker: Tigereye Brew)Healing Elixirs will no longer activate if the Monk is already at full health, and activate automatically when the Monk has less than 35% of their maximum health.Power Strikes will now activate from all Chi generating abilities; Jab, Expel Harm, Spinning Crane Kick (when it hits at least 3 targets), Keg Smash, Crackling Jade Lightning, and Soothing Mist.Ring of Peace has a new visual effect and now disarms both enemies and those attacking allies within the Ring of Peace's area-of-effect for 4 seconds (up from 3 seconds); the silence effect for casting spells remains unchanged at 3 seconds.Glyphs Glyph of Afterlife now increases the chance to summon a Healing Sphere by 100% (up from 25% chance).Paladin

Talents Eternal Flame's initial healing has been reduced by 30%.Sacred Shield (Old) has been renamed to Holy Shield and is no longer a talent. Holy Shield is a Protection Paladin ability learned at level 85.Sacred Shield (New) Holy: When the Paladin or their Beacon of Light target falls below 30% health, that target gains a Sacred Shield absorbing damage equal to 30% of their maximum health. Sacred Shield can only occur once every 2 minutes.Protection, Retribution: When the Paladin falls below 30% health, they gain a Sacred Shield absorbing damage equal to 30% of their maximum health. Sacred Shield can only occur once every 2 minutes.Sanctified Wrath Holy: Now also increases the critical strike chance of Holy Shock by 20%.Protection: Now reduces the cooldown of Judgment by 100% (up from 50%).Selfless Healer stacks now also work on Divine Light in addition to Flash of Light. Bastion of Glory will now apply Selfless Healer's bonus to healing to the casting Paladin as well as other targets and consume all stacks of Bastion of Glory in the process.Glyphs Glyph of the Alabaster Shield now increases damage for the next Shield of the Righteous by 10% per stack (down from 20% per stack).Glyph of Denounce now causes Holy Shock to reduce the cast time of the next Denounce by 0.5 seconds, and the effect can stack up to 3 times.Holy Mastery: Illuminated Healing no longer activates from periodic healing effects.Divine Plea no longer reduces the amount of healing done by 50%.Priest

Talents Divine Insight for Discipline Priests now has a 100% chance to activate its effect after using Penance (up from 40%), and now displays an effect in the UI when it's active.From Darkness, Comes Light Discipline, Holy: Now also has a chance to activate its effect on cast for these following spells; Penance, Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending, and Prayer of Healing.Shadow: Now has a 20% chance to activate its effect for Shadow Priests (up from a 15% chance).Glyphs Glyph of Purify now causes Purify to heal the target for 5% of their maximum health after successfully dispelling a magical effect or disease (up from 3%).Glyph of Reflective Shield now causes Power Word: Shield to reflect 70% of the damage absorbed (up from 45%).Holy Serendipity no longer displays a spell effect when in the UI when it's active.Shadow Shadowform now increases the Priest's armor by 60%, but no longer reduces all damage taken by 15%.Rogue

Glyphs Glyph of Recuperate now increases the healing of Recuperate by an additional 1% (up from 0.5%).Shaman

General Healing Rain's radius has been increased to 12 yards, up from 10 yards.Talents Conductivity has been redesigned. Casting Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave, Healing Surge, or Chain Heal, increases the duration of Healing Rain by 1 second. Damaging an enemy with Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Earthshock, or Stormstrike increases the duration of Healing Rain by 1 second.Healing Tide Totem now heals for 50% more.Stone Bulwark Totem's initial damage absorption shield now absorbs an additional 33% in damage.Unleashed Fury Earthliving Weapon effect now applies to the Shaman, not the target.Restoration Purification now only increases healing done by Healing Stream Totem by 50% (was healing done by all Water totems).
Warlock

General The debuff from using a Demonic Gateway has been increased to 60 seconds (up from 15 seconds).Fel Flame now deals 13% more damage, costs 2% less mana, and no longer increases the duration of damage-over-time spells.Rain of Fire now has a reduced chance to generate Burning Embers.Talents Kil'jaden's Cunning no longer reduces movement speed, and will now allow the Warlock to cast Incinerate, Malefic Grasp, and Shadow Bolt while moving. is no longer a passive ability. Kil'jaden's Cunning now has a duration of 15 seconds with a 1.5 minute cooldown.Mannoroth's Fury is no longer a passive ability. Mannoroth's Fury now has a duration of 10 seconds with a 60 second cooldown, and increases the area of area-of-effect by 500% and increases damage by 100% for Hellfire, Immolation Aura, Rain of Fire, and Seed of Corruption.Soul Leech can now also activate from Shadowburn, and caps out at 15% of the Warlock and their pet's maximum health (down from 100%).
Warrior

General Blood and Thunder now also increases the damage of Thunder Clap by 50%.Hamstring is no longer on a global cooldown.Riposte is a new passive ability learned at level 76. When the Warrior dodges or parries any attack, they gain 50% of their Parry and Dodge as an additional bonus to Critical Strike for 20 seconds.Shield Wall no longer requires a shield. If the Warrior does not have a shield equipped, it will show a visual of an equipped shield.Spell Reflection no longer requires a shield. If the Warrior does not have a shield equipped, it will show a visual of an equipped shield.Talents Impending Victory now heals the Warrior for 20% of their maximum health at all times (up from 15% on attack and 20% on kills that yield experience or honor).Storm Bolt now also has an off-hand attack for Fury Warriors.Warbringer now roots the target for 4 seconds instead of stunning them for 3 seconds. The 50% reduction to movement speed snare effect for 8 seconds remains unchanged. Glyph of Blitz will now cause Warbringer to root an additional 2 nearby targets.Arms Seasoned Soldier now also reduces the cost of Thunder Clap by 10 Rage.Sweeping Strikes now causes melee attacks to strike an additional nearby target for 75% of the initial damage (up from 50%).Protection Ultimatum now activates from critical hits with Shield Slam instead of a flat 20% chance, and the ability will make the next Heroic Strike or Cleave be a critical hit in addition to costing no Rage.Quests The Strength of One's Foes: For players on this step of the legendary quest; all Throne of Thunder bosses now have a chance to drop a Sigil of Power or Sigil of Wisdom in addition to their normal loot. Players should no longer be receiving excess Sigils of Power or Sigils of Wisdom.Pet Battles

Pet Battle General Round timers in PvP Pet Battles will now get progressively shorter for a player who takes more than 15 seconds to issue a command during their turn.Battle Pets Any Battle Pet that could be awarded from a Throne of Thunder boss on Raid Finder difficulty can now be won from a bonus roll, in addition to the standard bonus roll reward.Battle Pet Abilities Trihorn Charge damage has been reduced by 11.5% and now has a 1-round cooldown.PvP [PTR]: For testing purposes, the item level scaling of gear in Arenas, Battlegrounds and Rated Battlegrounds has been increased to 512 during the 5.4 PTR. Season 14 Grievous Conquest gear is exempt from this item level ceiling.Battlegrounds and Arenas

Arenas For Arena matches lasting longer than 15 minutes, one of the teams will receive a buff called "The Crowd Chose You" that increases damage, critical strike chance, stealth detection, and reduces damage taken. The buff is awarded based on the following criteria. Team with the largest number of players alive.Team that brought an enemy player closest to death (lowest health).Arena Rating scaling in the 2v2 bracket has been tuned to be consistent with the 3v3 bracket.Items [PTR]: For testing purposes, Flaskataur, Esq. will be available near the Niuzao Temple selling normal Tier-16 armor for gold.
Tags: breaking, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-ptr, patch-5.4-ptr-patch-notes, patch-notes, ptr, ptr-patch-notes, siege-of-orgrimmar

Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria

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Know Your Lore: Patch 5.4 and the legacy of Y'Shaarj

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

So I was going to write about Med'an again this week, but with patch 5.4 on the horizon it felt like now was the time to talk about Y'Shaarj, the single most active dead god we've ever seen. In case it needs to be said, yes, there's going to be spoilers and lots of spoilers too. We will be talking about the patch 5.4 storyline, and pretty much everything other patch since Mists of Pandaria debuted.

It has been a presence in Pandaria since before it was Pandaria. The mantid served it - indeed, they still revere its memory. The Sha are a result of it. The Titans destroyed it, yet it will not be destroyed. Ancient and terrible, its seven heads proved immortal, its dread essence exhaled out across the very land, bringing the darkest emotions of the mortal heart into stark existence. It is Y'Shaarj. It is dead. And being dead has proved no hindrance. One of the Old Gods, Y'Shaarj has shaped the land in death, and even now, it threatens to return to life.
To understand Y'Shaarj, you must look back to the time before the return of the Titans, when the Old Gods made sport of their creation. Azeroth was that which they battened upon - they infested the world like parasites, drained its essence, forced its very elements to fight for their amusement. The mantid descend from the servitor races the Old Gods created to honor and adore them in their great wickedness. To quote the mantid:

Before your history began, our empire was vast. We shared this world with our sister kingdoms, Ahn'Qiraj and Azjol-Nerub.
Our Gods were many, and powerful. We mantid worshipped the seven heads of Y'shaarj.
Great was the Old One, and terrible was His wrath. He consumed hope and begat despair; He inhaled courage and breathed fear.
When the usurpers came - the ones you call "Titans" - Y'shaarj was destroyed.
His last terrible breath has haunted this land ever since, but the shadows he left behind are mere whispers of his former glory.

What we know of the history of Pandaria tells us that when they returned, the Titans raised a war host to do battle with the Old Gods, a host led by powerful beings and composed of stone warriors (using the resilient foundation of creation in a subterranean being matrix as we discovered in Uldaman) - each region of Azeroth seems to have had a slightly different version of these legions. In the region now known as Uldum, the Keepers created stone servants and in Ulduar the legacy of the Titans can be seen in the many watchers, the vrykul, earthen and giants. In what we now call Pandaria, one of these Titanic Watchers, Ra,(known by the mogu as Master Ra, or Ra-Den in their later language) led a legion of stone to protect one of the Titans precious life-cradles, a place known to us as the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.

During this time, the battle between Titan and Old God reached its climax. In the southern hemisphere, the dread seven headed monstrosity Y'Shaarj, the eater of hope, met a Titan in combat. And in the end, the world discovered why these potent forces had done their best to battle through proxies, why Y'Shaarj had sent winged legions to do battle with Ra-Den and his army of stone. The Old God died, and the Titan fell. In death, Y'Shaarj poured his terrible final breath forth onto the land, and from that act was born the hideous Sha. Each of the prime Sha is an echo of Y'Shaarj's many heads, and they infested the land drawing strength from the negative emotions of mortals.

And in this way Pandaria has never been free from Y'Shaarj. When the Emperor Shaohao purged himself of his doubt, hatred, anger, despair, violence and fear and imprisoned them in the land, he was conquering aspects of Y'Shaarj, but by not purging himself of his pride he ultimately failed, and it was the Sha of Pride that created the concealing mists that sheltered Pandaria from the effects of the Sundering - and which kept it, proud and isolated, to stagnate for 10,000 years while the rest of the world moved on without it. During the reign of the mogu, after Lei Shen had ascended to the throne as Thunder King and first Emperor, the Korune magicians created the Divine Bell, with which the anger and hatred and violence of mogu warriors could be enhanced while the doubt, fear and despair of their enemies could be magnified - made from the flesh of a maker, it drew upon darkest shadow - the shadow of Y'Shaarj itself, a being of shadow.

And in the very heart of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, that cradle of life Ra=Den and his legions first marched to protect, the Titans buried an even more terrible artifact, for even in death Y'Shaarj reached out to corrupt and befoul the world. Y'Shaarj's malevolent heart, a thing of pure darkness which whispers foul promises and corruption, was imprisoned in a great vault and sealed away under the watch of Norushen, possibly a direct servant or lieutenant of Ra-Den. As to why the Titans chose to seal away the Heart of Y'Shaarj instead of destroying it, we don't know. Perhaps they couldn't destroy it, perhaps they feared to do so, or perhaps the Heart is in some way connected to the magical potency of the Vale's waters. But what we do know is as follows: Y'Shaarj, despite being dead, can still speak to others, can still tempt them to open its containment vessel, and once this has been done, Y'Shaarj can possess them. An insufficiently strong will is obliterated instantly, as the first fool who opened the Old God's prison discovered.

Now, going into patch 5.4, we know that the breaching of Y'Shaarj's prison seems to have drawn the Sha of Pride to the Vale, perhaps attempting to find and rejoin with the heart of Y'Shaarj. Meanwhile, Garrosh Hellscream has removed the heart to Orgrimmar, seeking to repeat his earlier experimentation with the Divine Bell but this time with a more pure source, for Y'Shaarj's power is that of all seven Sha combined. What's more, the fact that Y'Shaarj, despite its death, can communicate with others and the arrival of the Sha of Pride in the Vale upon its exposure implies that Y'Shaarj can still reach out to the larger world and that could be why it was sealed away underneath the Vale, to prevent its song from stirring the hearts of its followers. The Dread Wastes border the Vale - only the Serpent's Spine prevents the mantid from ranging further afield.

Worse, we know that the Klaxxi have sent their Paragons to Orgrimmar in patch 5.4, although we don't know why yet. Did Y'Shaarj call them? Is the heart that powerful, even in death? And will it be Garrosh Hellscream using it, or it using him? We are on the cusp of finding out the answers to these questions. Y'Shaarj slouches towards Orgrimmar.

While you don't need to have played the previous Warcraft games to enjoy World of Warcraft, a little history goes a long way toward making the game a lot more fun. Dig into even more of the lore and history behind the World of Warcraft in WoW Insider's Guide to Warcraft Lore. Tags: featured, guide, guide-to-lore, Klaxxi, lore, lore-guide, Mantid, role-play, role-playing-guide, rp-guide, Sha, Sha-of-Pride, world-of-warcraft-lore, wow-guide, wow-lore, wow-role-playing, wow-role-playing-guide, wow-rp, wow-rp-guide, wow-rping, YShaarj

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Lore, Know your Lore, Mists of Pandaria

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Patch 5.4 PTR: More spell changes to facilitate warlock talent nerfs

Warlocks around the world have been weeping at the Patch 5.4 PTR intended nerf to Kil'jaeden's Cunning and Mannoroth's Fury. Blizzard Community Manager Lore had already posted an explanation for the tier 6 talent nerfs and some unseen PTR mechanics that were not in the patch notes to help aid warlocks in recovering DPS lost to movement.

CM Lore is back tonight with another post of spell changes in the next build for warlocks in the continuing discussion of the Kil'jaeden's Cunning and Mannoroth's Fury talent nerfs. After the break, you may read about a minor note about Rain of Fire generating less embers (specifics currently unknown), so that the developers can further discourage use of the spell in single-target situations.

Fel Flame is being reworked entirely: it will no longer extended DoTs and it has a 1.5 second cast time instead of being instant-cast. In return, Fel Flame will be castable while moving and has received a small damage buff. Haunt, in return, will go back to being interrupted by movement. Affliction is being further compensated for the loss of Malefic Grasp while moving by expectedly moving the damage done power back into Haunt and the three DoTs.

Finally, Kil'jaeden's Cunning and Mannoroth's Fury are both on a 1 minute cooldown (down from 1.5 minutes) but also a lowered duration of 10 seconds (down from 15 seconds). Mannoroth's Fury applies to only the main AoEs but it provides a 100% damage increase to the specific AoE spells as well as the expanded area.
LoreGot a few updates for you guys. Standard disclaimer applies that this is all still in early testing and subject to change.

Fel Flame has gotten a slight rework. It now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can always be cast while moving. Also, it no longer extends the duration of damage over time effects (and, as such, no longer causes them to lose their "snapshotted" stats) and has gotten a small damage buff. The intent here is that you should be able to use this to keep up some damage when you need to move, but you'll want to stick to your standard rotation otherwise.

Looking specifically at Affliction, we're lowering the bonus damage that Malefic Grasp provides and moving that damage over into Haunt and the DoT effects themselves to compensate. We still want Malefic Grasp to be your primary filler for single target DPS, but this will make it a bit less punishing when you can't afford to channel it (especially in PvP). Haunt will once again be interrupted by movement, in favor of the Fel Flame change.

There's been a couple adjustments to the level 90 talents as well. Both Kil'Jaeden's Cunning and Mannoroth's Fury have had their cooldowns and durations lowered to 60 and 10 seconds, respectively. Mannoroth's Fury now only applies to the core AoE damage spells (Seed of Corruption, Hellfire, Immolation Aura, and Rain of Fire), but increases their damage by 100% while active in addition to the range increase. Note that Rain of Fire is being changed to no longer generate enough Burning Embers to be worth using in a single target rotation (so, Destruction shouldn't feel forced into Mannoroth's Fury).

These should hopefully be hitting the PTR in the next build. Once again, please remember that we're very early in the 5.4 development process. Any or all of this may still change before the patch goes live.

Tags: breaking, featured, fel-flame, guide-to-locks, guide-to-warlocks, haunt, hellfire, immolation-aura, kiljaedens-cunning, lock-guide, lock-info, lock-talents, malefic grasp, MaleficGrasp, mannoroths-fury, patch-5.4, rain-of-fire, seed-of-corruption, warlock-guide, warlock-info, warlock-talents, wow-lock, wow-lock-info, wow-locks, wow-warlock, wow-warlock-info, wow-warlocks

Filed under: Warlock, Mists of Pandaria

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Patch 5.4 PTR: Arena tie-break system revamp with a 1,000% damage buff

Blizzard Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka tweeted over the weekend in response to a player who sent over this image of a buff on his character on the PTR. "The Crowd Chose You!!!" is a buff that, as you can see from the tooltip, gives huge additional damage, as well as preventing that player from taking any damage. The person who captured the shot tweeted to Holinka asking for clarification, as you would in that situation, and Holinka replied, saying that it was a tie-breaker.

Naturally this caused quite a lot of excitement among Holinka's followers, with some people getting rather upset and worried that this would somehow result in a race to see who was the first to press their button, or similar, so Holinka followed up with a further tweet clarifying exactly what the buff would be used for.

@Yasko89 It isn't a tiebreaker...it's a match ender. Who gets it is the tiebreaker.

- Holinka (@holinka) June 15, 2013

Now, what this means is that the fears of players who are saying "this buff is OP" are unfounded. This will most likely be applied to a player or players on the team that the tie-break system concludes should have won an arena match that is about to time out, allowing that player or those players to bring the match to a close, removing their opponents' ability to turtle or use stealth to hide.

What remains in question, and as Holinka adds this will be covered by future patch notes, is just how exactly the game decides to award this buff to one team or another. I've discussed this previously in a Blood Sport column, but that system is the important element here, although the buff is cool. I personally think that, once the buff is active, there should be a block on any player leaving the arena. Because if players just left, that would really spoil your fun! Tags: arena-tie-break, breaking, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-pvp, tie-break

Filed under: PvP

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Patch 5.4 PTR: More spell changes to facilitate warlock talent nerfs

Warlocks around the world have been weeping at the Patch 5.4 PTR intended nerf to Kil'jaeden's Cunning and Mannoroth's Fury. Blizzard Community Manager Lore had already posted an explanation for the tier 6 talent nerfs and some unseen PTR mechanics that were not in the patch notes to help aid warlocks in recovering DPS lost to movement.

CM Lore is back tonight with another post of spell changes in the next build for warlocks in the continuing discussion of the Kil'jaeden's Cunning and Mannoroth's Fury talent nerfs. After the break, you may read about a minor note about Rain of Fire generating less embers (specifics currently unknown), so that the developers can further discourage use of the spell in single-target situations.

Fel Flame is being reworked entirely: it will no longer extended DoTs and it has a 1.5 second cast time instead of being instant-cast. In return, Fel Flame will be castable while moving and has received a small damage buff. Haunt, in return, will go back to being interrupted by movement. Affliction is being further compensated for the loss of Malefic Grasp while moving by expectedly moving the damage done power back into Haunt and the three DoTs.

Finally, Kil'jaeden's Cunning and Mannoroth's Fury are both on a 1 minute cooldown (down from 1.5 minutes) but also a lowered duration of 10 seconds (down from 15 seconds). Mannoroth's Fury applies to only the main AoEs but it provides a 100% damage increase to the specific AoE spells as well as the expanded area.
LoreGot a few updates for you guys. Standard disclaimer applies that this is all still in early testing and subject to change.

Fel Flame has gotten a slight rework. It now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can always be cast while moving. Also, it no longer extends the duration of damage over time effects (and, as such, no longer causes them to lose their "snapshotted" stats) and has gotten a small damage buff. The intent here is that you should be able to use this to keep up some damage when you need to move, but you'll want to stick to your standard rotation otherwise.

Looking specifically at Affliction, we're lowering the bonus damage that Malefic Grasp provides and moving that damage over into Haunt and the DoT effects themselves to compensate. We still want Malefic Grasp to be your primary filler for single target DPS, but this will make it a bit less punishing when you can't afford to channel it (especially in PvP). Haunt will once again be interrupted by movement, in favor of the Fel Flame change.

There's been a couple adjustments to the level 90 talents as well. Both Kil'Jaeden's Cunning and Mannoroth's Fury have had their cooldowns and durations lowered to 60 and 10 seconds, respectively. Mannoroth's Fury now only applies to the core AoE damage spells (Seed of Corruption, Hellfire, Immolation Aura, and Rain of Fire), but increases their damage by 100% while active in addition to the range increase. Note that Rain of Fire is being changed to no longer generate enough Burning Embers to be worth using in a single target rotation (so, Destruction shouldn't feel forced into Mannoroth's Fury).

These should hopefully be hitting the PTR in the next build. Once again, please remember that we're very early in the 5.4 development process. Any or all of this may still change before the patch goes live.

Tags: breaking, featured, fel-flame, guide-to-locks, guide-to-warlocks, haunt, hellfire, immolation-aura, kiljaedens-cunning, lock-guide, lock-info, lock-talents, malefic grasp, MaleficGrasp, mannoroths-fury, patch-5.4, rain-of-fire, seed-of-corruption, warlock-guide, warlock-info, warlock-talents, wow-lock, wow-lock-info, wow-locks, wow-warlock, wow-warlock-info, wow-warlocks

Filed under: Warlock, Mists of Pandaria

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Diving into Patch 5.4's PTR

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Okay, so let's look at what we're getting as of the most recent Patch 5.4 PTR build. What stands out? Patch 5.4 PTR Patch notesWarrior

General Enrage now also triggers on critical hits from Devastate and Shield Slam.Shattering Throw no longer costs rage.Talents Enraged Regeneration now instantly heals the warrior for 10% of their total health (up from 5%), and an additional 10% over 5 seconds (up from 5%).Vigilance no longer transfers damage to the Warrior. The talent now reduces amount of damage the target takes by 30% for 12 seconds.Arms Slam now does an additional 10% damage to targets affected by the warrior's Colossus Smash.Fury Titan's Grip now works with polearms.

There are actually some other changes if you log onto the PTR itself that aren't in the notes: Bladestorm is down to a 1 minute cooldown on the PTR, for instance. I like to call this the Christmas in Pandaria. In fact, if you look at these spell changes on Wowhead, you'll see that a lot of spells got buffed - Storm Bolt's damage got increased, Impending Victory's heal got doubled to 30%. So now that we've looked at the changes, what do they mean?
Well, the change to Enrage is clearly aimed at getting Protection Warriors to become enraged more often, thus increasing their damage dealt by 10% for 6 seconds. It will make hitting Devastate feel more valuable, and since it costs no rage and has no cooldown, this means warriors can lean on it when they want to get enraged. It also means warriors might consider taking crit gear with hit or expertise for their tanking sets, since the 10 rage when you enter an enrage state is able to be directly converted to Shield Block or Barrier. In essence, crit becomes active mitigation by filling up that rage bar.

Now, this isn't going to magically fix warrior DPS when tanking - it'll still probably be lower than other tanks. If it makes crit that good for prot that we start stacking it, we may see significant damage increases, but I don't expect that to happen. It is interesting that this change, while doing nothing for haste, gives warriors a DPS offstat in the same way that paladin and DK tanks use haste on their gear.

I'd still like to see some damage buffs, of course. But it's a positive step in the right direction.

The changes to Enraged Regeneration (which are in the patch notes), Impending Victory (which are not, but which are currently live on the PTR) and Vigilance all seem aimed at buffing talents that are less popular and also, potentially, helping a bit with warrior fragility. DPS warriors are current very susceptible to dying compared to other classes, and while I don't think these changes will really fix that (for one thing, neither change will let a warrior cheat the way other classes can and do and avoid things entirely) they are positive changes that also have the side effect of making these talents more competitive. I've played with Enraged Regeneration on the PTR, and popped while you're enraged it can heal a good sized chunk of damage.

The problem with the changes to these talents is that it doesn't really address why players don't choose them, except in the case of Vigilance which is now a very strong talent for a tank. (The refreshes on taunt can be a godsend.) Then again, even with taking the damage it's a strong talent for a tank, it's just better in 5.4. If you didn't like Enraged Regeneration, it was probably less about the size of the heal (although it was certainly weak) than it was about it being a button you have to press - combined with it basically being a heal and a heal over time when many other classes have abilities that just plain prevent damage or debuffs from even being applied, and I'm not sure that the status quo will change. I tend to take ER as a tank because I like having a dependable cooldown.

Shattering Throw not costing rage is nice, but considering it still has a cast time, it's still going to be annoying to use. Just go the rest of the way and remove that cast, make it an instant. The cooldown will be enough to keep it under control.

Slam being changed is clearly an attempt to prop up Arms' damage. It'll take more than that. Bladestorm with a 1 minute cooldown is lovely for AoE fights, but it won't make warriors take the talent unless they can depend on getting to AoE stuff at least once a minute. Storm Bolt is going to hit bosses/unstunnable mobs like a truck made up of smaller yet angrier trucks, but will that make you take it over Avatar or Bloodbath? Personally, getting to synch my Bloodbath and Bladestorm every single minute seems pretty compelling to me.

Finally, the purely cosmetic change I have longed for, Titan's Grip now works with polearms. It looks a little weird in action still (I assume that will get ironed out) but it's nice to finally get to use Bo-Ris in my main hand. I seriously hope that this leads to the design and itemization of more polearms for warriors (and those other strength classes we don't talk about here) - at least now there's no reason not to do it.

My take on the 5.4 changes (except for TG with polearms) is That's a good start, but more is needed. Protection warriors need more baseline damage, not just more enrages. Getting some use out of crit in the same way other warriors do is nice, but until I get a chance to really see the change to Devastate and Shield Slam proccing Enrage in action, I won't know how much more DPS warrior tanks get out of it. And while I like seeing the survival talents get buffed, I feel like they need more oomph before they'll become compelling. But I'm definitely happy with what I see so far - more warrior tank damage and more survivability are moves to address our current problems. At the center of the fury of battle stand the warriors: protection, arms and fury. Check out more strategies and tips especially for warriors, from hot issues for today's warriors to Cataclysm 101 for DPS warriors and our guide to reputation gear for warriors. Tags: featured, guide-to-warriors, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-PTR, warrior-guide, warrior-info, warrior-talents, wow-warrior, wow-warrior-info, wow-warriors

Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Mists of Pandaria

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Know Your Lore: The lore leading into patch 5.4

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

Patch 5.4 is now live on the PTR servers for testing, and it has several ... dramatic changes, both to the world and to the characters in it. While patch 5.3 may seem small on story, there's actually plenty going on -- more than enough to serve as a catalyst heading into the new patch. In fact, plenty of the events in 5.3 directly effect what's going on in patch 5.4. Although we don't know the whole story just yet, considering the PTR is a test realm that may undergo changes as time goes on, we do have enough to tie 5.3 and 5.4 together in a significant way.

If you've been following the lore, you may have seen the signs already and know what to expect. But if you haven't been paying much attention to the story, or you're wondering what's going on with those images people have been posting from the patch 5.4 PTR, we'll do our best to get you all caught up. Mists of Pandaria has been an expansion chock full of new story, and patch 5.3 has certainly been no exception to this -- but 5.4 is shaping up to be the biggest hit we've seen so far in Mists.

Please note that today's Know Your Lore contains some spoilers for patch 5.4 content. If you're avoiding spoilers, turning away now would be advised!

The deadly delights of Pandaria

Here's the story so far -- patch 5.1 brought Garrosh Hellscream, Varian Wrynn, and the forces of the Alliance and Horde to Pandaria. But we, as players, have already experienced both the delights and horrors that the new continent has to offer, and we've got a thorough understanding of exactly what we need to be cautious of. We've seen the horrors of the Sha firsthand, and we've interacted closely with the natives of Pandaria. We've seen that the mogu are a threat to be reckoned with, and we've worked extensively with the mantid. We've even noted the curious waters of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.

In all that introductory story was the foundation of everything that was to come after -- and even some of the events of patch 5.4. But the arrival of Varian and Garrosh heralded the direct influence of both factions on Pandaria's soil. And while Varian has been notably cautious -- which is honestly a good thing, given the demonstration of Horde power when Theramore was destroyed -- the Horde and more importantly Garrosh have not. Varian's willing to listen to his son, he's also smart enough to know that the Horde is a force to be reckoned with. He's been observing what the Horde has been doing, all this time, and trying to put a preemptive halt to anything remarkably bad.

Warchief Hellscream, on the other hand, doesn't particularly care what that strike force sent to Pandaria actually found. He's looking for a way to beef up his forces and claim Pandaria for his own -- and a way to strengthen his forces in as significant a fashion as possible, so that once Pandaria is conquered, he can continue with his plans for Horde domination of Kalimdor. That's what Theramore was supposed to be the beginning of -- but Jaina Proudmoore and the Alliance put a halt to his plans. Garrosh didn't give up, he just took a step back to try and find another way. A more powerful way. A way the Alliance wouldn't be able to counter.

The Divine Bell and beyond

As far as Warchief Hellscream is concerned, Pandaria, its residents, and its secrets are all tools to be used to strengthen and bolster the Horde. Which is why, to Garrosh, the mogu and their powers seemed like a very good thing to observe and take advantage of, if he could. After all, the mogu empires subjugated the rest of Pandaria and nearly crushed it with their iron fist. The downfall to the mogu was the pandaren rebellion, which was also aided by the grummles, jinyu, and even the hozen. These oppressed races came together and pretty much snuffed out any chance of victory for the mogu empire.

You'd think that Garrosh would've learned a lesson from that -- and he has, but it's the wrong one. Instead of looking at the situation and realizing the unification of many races was far stronger than the iron grasp of one, Garrosh simply decided the mogu weren't strong enough. That they didn't harness the tools they had and use them correctly. That they weren't familiar enough with the face of their enemy to recognize it. In a way, he was right.

But rather than look at the winners of that rebellion and asking himself what they did right, he looked at the losers of that rebellion and where they went wrong. Rather than using the strengths and techniques of the united races of Pandaria, Garrosh chose to look at the strength of the mogu and how it could be utilized in a different fashion. Which is where the Divine Bell comes in -- Garrosh wanted to use the Bell's powers to create an army of supreme warriors. Did it work? No, thankfully it did not -- but it showed Garrosh that there was strength to be harnessed and used in the Sha.

Rebellion, part two

In an odd, bizarre twist of fate, we are almost playing out part two of the pandaren rebellion -- history is repeating itself. Playing the part of the mogu are Garrosh Hellscream and his Kor'kron forces. Playing the part of the saurok, created to be used as mogu tools, is the rest of the Horde. Playing the part of the pandaren race are the Alliance. Is it any wonder, then, what the outcome of this battle will be? Just like the saurok, the rest of the Horde races are chafing under the foot of Hellscream. They aren't willing to be used as tools, the way Garrosh seems to insist they be used.

Sylvanas and her Forsaken never seemed to hold any respect for Hellscream, even in Cataclysm -- the Darkspear and tauren followed suit. With Garrosh's disastrous experiments with the Divine Bell, even the blood elves have come to see what is blatantly obvious -- Garrosh Hellscream isn't a Warchief of the Horde. He's a Warchief of what he views the Horde -- orcs. Tauren, to some small degree, are accepted because they are mighty warriors. The rest? The rest are cannon fodder as far as Hellscream is concerned.

Yet Garrosh refuses to see what is right in front of his eyes -- he insists on trying to control and subjugate, to harness power he has no right to be tampering with. In Ragefire Chasm, it's obvious that there are dark experiments going on, experiments that Garrosh has full knowledge about. And in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, Garrosh and his forces uncover what the Vale is hiding -- the dark heart of Y'shaarj, an Old God long thought dead, and the origin of the Sha.

The Alliance

Meanwhile, the Alliance are playing their part in this odd recreation of the pandaren rebellion. They're doing what the pandaren did, so many years ago -- using subterfuge and careful observation to figure out Garrosh's weak points. The mogu used the grummles for communication and supply delivery -- once the grummles stopped delivering the correct messages or supplies, chaos ensued. The mogu, it seemed, had no real idea of how to cope, without races to serve them. They quickly fell apart after that, and the pandaren rebellion struck the final blow.

The Alliance is watching Garrosh's every move like a hawk. Varian is exercising patience, waiting for that perfect opportunity to strike -- but not until he has every bit of intelligence needed on what, exactly, Hellscream's plans really are. He got a brief picture of it in patch 5.1, when Garrosh revealed he was after the secrets of the mogu. But Varian was also smart enough to realize Garrosh wouldn't stop with that failed plan, that he'd find another way.

Did the pandaren stop the saurok from rebelling, when they struck out against their mogu oppressors? No. Did they form a truce with the saurok, or attempt to be friendly? No. They simply let the mogu and saurok fight, working each other into a frenzy of chaos that damaged both sides beyond repair. In a way, that's what the Alliance is doing in patch 5.3. They aren't going to be friends with the Horde -- but they'll do what the pandaren never did with the saurok, and encourage the Darkspear Rebellion to continue undermining Garrosh's efforts.

Why? Because it's way easier to strike an enemy when they are disorganized and their attentions are wrapped somewhere else. While the Darkspear Rebellion is in play, Horde is dying -- and it doesn't matter if it's the Horde of Warchief Hellscream, or the Horde of Vol'jin and his rebels. As far as the Alliance are concerned, both are enemies worth watching -- but if those two enemies are going to try to kill each other, why not encourage that?

Patch 5.4

Which leads us into patch 5.4, and the realization that Garrosh has definitely not let up in his attempts to harness power. Only this time, he's not trying to harness mogu relics -- why would he? The mogu empire didn't work. That much is obvious, now, to Warchief Hellscream. You know what did work? You know what actually succeeded in crippling Pandaria, even after the mogu were long gone, the Zandalari fled, and the saurok hidden away in the wilds of Krasarang?

The Sha.

Not only have the Sha managed to hold the pandaren in check, they've held the mantid in check. The mantid, who even the mogu feared -- feared enough to build a giant wall shutting them out of the rest of the continent. They've even held the mogu in check -- it was obvious, after the disastrous attempt to use the Divine Bell, that there was a reason it was hidden away. Because the only mogu who really understood what power the Divine Bell held was Lei Shen -- and after he died, the mogu couldn't continue to use it.

Why, then, would one attempt to simply ape a race that used another race to empower itself? Why not instead go to the race they sought to harness and use? This is why Garrosh Hellscream has such a keen interest in the heart of Y'shaarj -- the Heart of Pandaria. If he can somehow manufacture a way to use that power for his own, he can conquer the world. Which is more powerful -- a race whose empire held a continent under its thrall for centuries, or the remnants of an Old God that still continues to hold the continent in its grasp?

Corruption vs. Cleverness

Garrosh Hellscream has not been corrupted by some outside evil influence. He's very, very smart -- and ruthless in a way that perhaps only Gul'dan could have outdone. In a way, the two bear frightening similarities to each other. Both are obsessed with power, and both will stop at absolutely nothing to make sure they have the most advantageous position to use that power. Gul'dan gladly turned over the entire orcish race in exchange for power -- Garrosh looks like he's willing to turn over the entirety of the Horde for it.

Yes, we've seen screenshots of Garrosh's strange, mutilated, sha-infested form from the patch 5.4 PTR. But if you look at the dungeon journal entries for Garrosh, it becomes increasingly clear that he's not being corrupted by the Sha -- he's willingly using it to empower himself. Because Garrosh has come to the conclusion, particularly after the disastrous attempt to use the Divine Bell on his armies, that he is the only orc strong enough on Azeroth to wield this power. Like Lei Shen, he will wield the Sha as a weapon, and crush the rest of the world beneath his foot.

It's clear that Hellscream has his loyalists among the Horde -- largely among the Kor'kron, and those he has chosen for their strength. It's also clear that Hellscream has been paying attention, in at least some small part, to the other races of Pandaria. Who did the mogu fear most? The mantid. Who has Garrosh chosen to work with? The mantid -- although the mantid are likely helping for their own reasons, ones that Hellscream can't possibly understand.

The end result of all this chaos? That's a really good question. For now, the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, on the patch 5.4 PTR, is an uncanny echo of what we saw after our meddling in the Jade Forest. Sheer destruction, a place of unbridled beauty utterly destroyed. Whether or not we'll be able to repair the damage we've wrought this time around is unknown, and we'll have to wait until 5.4, and possibly beyond, to see how it all pans out.

While you don't need to have played the previous Warcraft games to enjoy World of Warcraft, a little history goes a long way toward making the game a lot more fun. Dig into even more of the lore and history behind the World of Warcraft in WoW Insider's Guide to Warcraft Lore. Tags: alliance, dark-heart-of-pandaria, divine-bell, featured, garrosh-hellscream, guide, guide-to-lore, horde, lei-shen, lore, lore-guide, mantid, mogu-empire, pandaren, pandaren-empire, patch-5.1, patch-5.2, patch-5.3, patch-5.4, patch-5.4-ptr, role-play, role-playing-guide, rp-guide, sha, vale-of-eternal-blossoms, varian-wrynn, world-of-warcraft-lore, wow-guide, wow-lore, wow-role-playing, wow-role-playing-guide, wow-rp, wow-rp-guide, wow-rping, yshaarj

Filed under: Lore, Know your Lore

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