Archive for February, 2008

Gamer

2.4 Item Set Changes

by Gamer at February 15th, 2008 in PTR | No Comments »

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Paladin
  • 4-piece bonus on all season healing sets (Redemption) has been changed to “Reduces the cooldown of your Hammer of Justice by 10 sec.” to “Increases the healing from your Holy Shock spell by 30%.”
  • Paladin Season 1/2 Retribution gear now now has resilience (Gladiator’s Vindication, Merciless Gladiator’s Vindication).
Druid
  • 4-piece bonus on Restoration-spec Arena and PvP sets has been changed to “The casting time on your Healing Touch spell is reduced by 0.25 sec.” (In 2.3 it was a 15% increase to outdoor movement speed.)
  • 4-piece bonus on Balance-spec Arena and PvP sets has been changed to “Your Wrath casts have a chance to reduce the cast time on your next Starfire by 1.5 sec.” (In 2.3 it was a 15% increase to outdoor movement speed.)
Mage
  • 4-piece bonus on Season 3 set has been changed to “Reduces the cooldown of your Blink spell by 2 sec.” (In 2.3 it was a 0.15 second reduction to Polymorph casting time.)
Shaman
  • 4-piece bonus on Vengeful Gladiator’s Thunderfist now Gives you a 50% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting Lightning Bolt. (In 2.3 it was 70%.)


Gamer

2.4 Mana Drain Changes

by Gamer at February 15th, 2008 in PTR | No Comments »

Warlocks

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Warlocks
  • Drain mana (Rank 1) now drains 63 mana every 1 sec from the target. (Was 42)
  • Drain mana (Rank 2) now drains 102 mana every 1 sec from the target. (Was 68)
  • Drain mana (Rank 3) now drains 149 mana every 1 sec from the target. (Was 99)
  • Drain mana (Rank 4) now drains 204 mana every 1 sec from the target. (Was 136)
  • Drain mana (Rank 5) now drains 254 mana every 1 sec from the target. (Was 169)
  • Drain mana (Rank 6) now drains 300 mana every 1 sec from the target. (Was 200)

Warlocks have received a buff to their mana drain ability. This is one change that I imagine most warlocks didn’t see coming. It’s a nice buff to contrast resilience now affecting mana drain spells. Even with max resilience affecting all mana drains by 25%, warlocks will now drain 25 more mana than before (225 mana every 1 second at max resilience).

Resilience now affects mana drain

Resilience and Mana Drain

Resilience and Mana Drain

This is one of the most significant updates to date and greatly affects hunters and priests. It doesn’t affect warlocks so much as mentioned above. Aggressive mana drain teams will definitely feel the affect as it will take them even more time to outlast the other setup. I feel the most compassionate toward hunters as viper sting is one of the strongest abilities in their arsenal.


Gamer

2.4 PvP Patch Notes

by Gamer at February 15th, 2008 in PTR | No Comments »

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

General
  • Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers.
  • Spell Haste: Spell haste now reduces the global cooldown on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. This change does not apply to melee and ranged abilities.
  • Spirit-Based Mana Regeneration: This system has been adjusted so that as your intellect rises, you will regenerate more mana per point of spirit.

What could have potentially been the biggest news here is that Spell Haste will affect the global cooldown. However, most PvPers don’t have access to Spell Haste gear outside of Zul’Aman, so this is far less significant than it could have been. Because of limited access to Spell Haste gear, Intellect affecting mana regeneration is far more important for PvP. It’s unclear as of now how much it will affect it, but expect to at least come away with more mp5 than before. Immediate impact: This makes druids even stronger than before.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Druid
  • Empowered Rejuvenation: This talent now properly affects the final heal from Lifebloom.
  • Gift of Nature: This talent now properly affects the healing from Tranquility.
  • Insect Swarm: Casting lower ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.
  • Lacerate: This ability now deals additional damage based on the attack power of the Druid.
  • Mangle (Bear) now properly triggers a 1.5 second global cooldown, increased from 1.0.
  • Natural Perfection: This ability will no longer be triggered by taking critical strikes while sitting. In addition, it is now affected by the Subtlety talent.
  • When a Druid in cat form casts Pounce it will now properly animate.

Druids were anticipating a handful of nerfs, but from what we see above it looks like they only received a few bug fixes and nothing more. Empowered Rejuvenation working properly is actually a buff. Way to escape the nerfbat, because I was really certain going into 2.4 that Druids were going to see both nerfs to Cyclone and nerfs to Lifebloom.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Hunter
  • Equipping a thrown weapon while in the middle of an Auto-Shot will no longer cause animation issues.
  • Casting Flare while in any way not visible, will no longer cause your flare to be invisible to other players.
  • Hunter’s Mark: Hunters with Improved Hunter’s Mark will now properly overwrite Hunter’s Mark cast by Hunters without the talent.
  • The stamina tooltip for hunter pets will now display the proper health increase.

Nothing significant here.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Mage
  • Using low ranks of Fire Ward and Frost Ward spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
  • Fire Ward: Using low ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing spells are penalized.
  • Frost Ward: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
  • Frostbite: When a frost spell is reflected back at a Mage, it is now possible for the Mage to suffer from the Frostibte effect.
  • Ice Barrier: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
  • Permafrost: This talent will now correctly increase the movement slowing effect of frost Armor instead of the attack speed slow.
  • Spellsteal will no longer overwrite a longer duration buff.

Slight tweak to Spellsteal.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Paladin
  • Avenger’s Shield, Holy Shield and Holy Shock: Casting lower ranks of these spells is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.
  • Divine Illumination: The mana energize from this talent no longer has a chance to set off other triggered effects.
  • Holy Shield and Holy Shock: Casting lower ranks of these spells is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.
  • Judgment of the Crusader: It is no longer possible to have icons for two different ranks of Judgment of the Crusader appear at the same time when judged by multiple Paladins.
  • Judgment of Wisdom: Some abilities (such as Frostbolt) were not triggering the mana energize effect from this spell. This has now been fixed.

Is this Divine Illumination change a typo? Divine Illumination doesn’t have mana energize. I suspect they mean standard Illumination rather than DI. DI simply reduces the mana of all spells by 50% for 15 seconds.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Priest
  • Fear Ward is now usable while in Shadow form.
  • Inner Focus: Chastise now benefits from Inner Focus. In addition, Starshards no longer consumes Inner Focus.
  • Power Word: Shield: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.
  • Prayer of Mending: This spell will now fade from players who leave or enter an instance, change continents, or exit the game.
  • Reflective Shield: The reactive damage from this talent no longer breaks crowd control affects which break on taking damage.
  • Shadowguard: No longer consumes the charge of Inner Focus when triggered.
  • Silent Resolve: This talent is now affects Surge of Light, Power Infusion, Inspiration, Spirit Tap, Blackout, Levitate, Shackle Undead, Touch of Weakness, Hex of Weakness, and Symbol of Hope.
  • Touch of Weakness: No longer consumes the charge of Inner Focus when triggered. It will also function properly even when the Priest with Touch of Weakness on is silenced or stunned.
  • Vampiric Touch: Casting lower ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.

The two biggest changes with Priests are that Shadow Priests can now cast Fear Ward in Shadow form and that Reflective Shield no longer breaks crowd control. It was presumably just an oversight by Blizzard to now allow Fear Ward for Shadow Priests in the first place, but nonetheless this is a nice fix. As far as reflective shield not breaking CC goes, it’ll be interesting to see if Priests bother spec’ing into this. I’ve seen several high-end Priests use this in 2s to beat Warrior/Druid. We’ll see if it gets even more play now.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Rogue
  • Cheat Death: A combat log message will now show when this ability activates.
  • Vanish: This ability will no longer sometimes cause the UI to display.
  • Shadowmeld as active when it has been cancelled.
  • Abilities that can be used while stealthed, without breaking stealth, can now be cast without breaking Vanish when used at the same time. Sap mechanic changed from “Incapacitate” to “Sap”. This will allow more humanoids that were previously immune to Sap to be vulnerable to Sap, but still immune to Gouge. Note that anything that removed Sap previously will still remove Sap after the change.

No fix to Cheat Death. Rogues can rejoice.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Shaman
  • Call of Thunder: (Rank 5) now gives 5% critical strike chance.
  • Earth Shield: Mana cost reduced roughly in half, and charges reduced from 10 to 6.
  • Elemental Focus: This buff will no longer be removed when Shamanistic Focus is triggered.
  • Healing Grace: This talent now reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.The resistance to being dispelled modifier from this talent now applies correctly to Water Breathing.
  • Rockbiter Weapon: Tooltip and error messages have been adjusted slightly.
  • Stormstrike has a new icon.
  • Totem timer icons will now show up under your player portrait when you cast totem spells. Right-clicking a totem timer icon will destroy that totem.
  • The Shaman spell Fire Nova Totem will no longer sometime detonate without doing any damage.

Healing Grace is now a viable talent for PvP. Formerly it simply reduced threat by 5%/10%/15% and was only used for PvE.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Warlock
  • Demonic Knowledge: This buff will no longer remain on enslaved demons when Enslave Demon is removed.
  • Pyroclasm: This talent now works correctly again with Rain of Fire.
  • Ritual of Summoning can be used to summon players into instances if they meet the instance requirements.
  • Shadow Ward: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.

Nothing of note.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Warrior
  • Endless Rage will now give the correct amount of rage as intended from damage dealt by a Warrior.
  • Stances: It is no longer possible to accidentally change into a stance you are already in via macros (resulting in a global cooldown and loss of rage).
  • Whirlwind: Critical strikes with the off-hand weapon from this ability can now trigger Flurry and Rampage.
  • Flurry will properly refresh if a crit occurs with 1 charge left.
  • Improved Hamstring (Arms) effect is now subject to diminishing returns when used in PvP.

Endless Rage being fixed is nice and you may now see some more Warriors going 41/20/0 than previously have, but the biggest change is to Improved Hamstring. I play a Warrior along with my Paladin and this is quite a significant change. It was definitely something you figured would happen sooner rather than later as spamstring without diminishing returns is unfair considering everything else has DR.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

PvP
  • Diminishing returns on honor for kills is being eliminated.
  • Honor will now be instantly calculated, and available for player use.
  • Players that have the resurrection sickness debuff will be worth no honor.
  • Added new PvP daily quests that send players to Halaa and the Spirit Towers of the Bone Wastes. These quests are available for Alliance and Horde at their respective local quest hubs.

No diminishing returns on honor for kills is a major change and for the best.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Arenas
  • Shadow Sight now increases damage taken by 5% rather than dealing damage over time. Duration has been reduced from 21 seconds to 15 seconds.

This really isn’t a significant change. It helps stealth teams out more if anything, but really 5% more damage isn’t going to make or break the game as long as the obvious focus target on your team doesn’t grab the Shadow Sight.


Gamer

2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament

by Gamer at February 15th, 2008 in Tournament | No Comments »

Press Release:

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

IRVINE, Calif. – February 14, 2008 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced plans to launch a new type of tournament competition using the Arena system in World of Warcraft®, its popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game. The tournaments will take place on special realms that allow competitors to instantly create level-70 characters with epic equipment, placing the focus on tactics and execution rather than normal adventuring.

“eSports is one of the most exciting facets of online gaming today,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re pleased to expand World of Warcraft’s tournament options for players who want to focus mainly on the competitive aspect of the game.”

The tournaments are scheduled to start in April with two rounds of online qualifiers in Europe, South Korea, North America, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. Each qualifier round will have a per-competitor entry fee — €15/£12 in Europe; 20,000 won in South Korea; $20 in North America; and NT$450 in the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau — and will run for six weeks. During this time, teams will play 3-vs.-3 matches on the tournament realm in their region, with the top four teams from each round advancing to the regional finals to compete for more than $27,000 in cash prizes. Winners from each regional will then be invited to a global championship event to compete for $120,000 in cash prizes, including a $75,000 grand prize.

Frequently Asked Questions are below:

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

Can I have more than three people on my team roster?
You can participate in more than one 3v3 Arena team; however, you must meet the minimum play requirements to qualify for the tournament. Each player may only qualify for one team. If a player is a member of two qualifying teams, he or she must choose which team to play for. Each team must have three eligible participants to advance to the regional finals.

How many games do I have to play to be eligible to qualify?
Each team must play a minimum of 200 games per qualifier. Each player, including “bench players,” must participate in at least 30% of the team’s total games to be eligible to advance to the regional finals. If a team were to play the minimum of 200 games, then each player on the team would have to have played in at least 60 of those games.


Gamer

Avada Kedavra wins Cyclone (EU) 5v5 Tournament

by Gamer at February 4th, 2008 in Tournament | No Comments »

The first Cyclone (EU) 5v5 tournament has concluded with Avade Kedavra beating ShowTimed 3-2 in the finals. A total of eight teams competed to determine who is the best 5v5 team in Europe and Avade Kedavra came out on top. Interestingly enough, both Avade Kedavra and ShowTimed run the same combo (Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Priest, Druid), which includes a rogue, where the only difference is the specs of each rogue. AK’s rogue (Adrasill) plays as Assassination/Shadowowstep whereas ST’s rogue (Zom, formerly Xom) plays as Mutilate.

The first two games were won by Avade Kedavra; but after the second game, Zom decided to respec deep Combat to try and end their losing streak. Their warlock also respeced to SL/SL to try and increase his survivability. It helped at first as ShowTimed took the next two games to even the score up, however, they lost the fifth and final game. Furthermore, even if ST had been able to come back from behind and win the best of five, ST was coming from the losing bracket, which would have meant they would have had to play another best of five games to determine the winner.

Either way, these two teams’ successes is very good news for all Rogues out there who have been contemplating their viability in 5v5 and bad news for Paladins and Warriors who were not represented on either team. It also further cements the idea that Shadowstep is the best spec for 5v5 supplanting both Mutilate and Combat as shown in these matches. It will be really interesting to see how many copycats will emerge and what, if any, counter will develop to take it down.

The final standings for the first Cyclone (EU) 5v5 Tournament are as follows:

1. Avada Kedavra (Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Priest, Druid)

2. ShowTimed (Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Priest, Druid)

3. Nihilum (Warrior, Hunter, Warlock, Priest, Paladin)

4. Knockout (Warrior, Hunter, Warlock, Priest, Paladin)

5-6. Are you gonna eat that (Rogue, Mage, Shaman, Priest, Paladin)

5-6. CHICKEN FRIED RICE (Warrior, Hunter, Warlock, Priest, Paladin)

7-8. Nagas (Warrior, Hunter, Warlock, Priest, Paladin)

7-8. I AR TANKER (Warrior, Mage, Warlock, Priest, Paladin)