The Altoholic » Patches

Frostmourne Hungers

BinaryMuse — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:34:45 +0000

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The Altoholic’s 3.3 To Do List

BinaryMuse — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:36:26 +0000

It is my understanding (from a few different sources) that the current plan is that 3.3 will be live next Tuesday, December 8th. Here’s just a little to-do list I’ve put together to make sure I get everything done I want to get done.

To Do Before Patch 3.3

Save up/smelt a bunch of Saronite Bars so I can transmute it all to titanium once the transmute has no cooldown
Save up 8 Crusader Orbs in preparation for possibly making my death knight tank my main character (for the 245 chest) done
Read up on each of the encounters in the new 5-man dungeons
Read up on current strategies for the available Icecrown Citadel bosses
Research gear upgrades from the new heroics

To Do After Patch 3.3

Transmute the Saronite Bars (above) into Titanium, make Titansteel for the 245 chest (above) done
Farm heroics for Emblems of Triumph for T9 level gear on the death knight
Run each of the new 5-man heroics, hope to be able to start the Quel’Delar chain

What do you have planned for 3.3?

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Chill of the Throne: Sunwell Radiance 2.0

BinaryMuse — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:44:16 +0000

Before I say anything else, I will say this: this is not a QQ post. In fact, I think Chill of the Throne is, in the end, a good idea (at least now that we’ve dug into the itemization hole, as it were).

What Is It

Chill of the Throne is a buff, similar to Sunwell Radiance in BC, that allows all enemy mobs in Icecrown Citadel (coming in 3.3, currently on the PTR) ignore 20% of their targets dodge. Essentially, if you are tanking IC, you can subtract 20% from your total avoidance; however, boss hits will be adjusted to compensate. Let’s continue the disussion.

Why Is It Here?

A couple people from WoW’s development team explain why they are implementing this spell, and Ghostcrawler discusses it a bit more. To summarize, tank avoidance is too high. This is primary because the team that planned out Wrath’s gear did not count on having hardmodes with higher item level gear–in the end, the gear people have is better than the gear the development team thought it would be. This means that, in order to offer any chance of a challenge to a raid, the hits that do actually hit the tank (ie, the ones that are not avoided) have to hit really hard in order to have any chance of killing the tank. What you end up with is healers having to time their big heals to land right after a bit hit (or else spam their biggest heals) and tanks that are unable to reactively use cooldowns.

Ideally (and Ghostcrawler has stated multiple times that this is the aim for Cataclysm), damage from a raid boss should be lower but more consistant (”smoother”), and the challenge in keeping tanks alive should be healers having to worry about running out of mana (i.e., not overhealing) and tanks having to use cooldowns more retroactively.

So, to try to push things that direction for the last raid of this expansion, Blizzard is nerfing avoidance artificially and also nerfing the amount of damage the bosses do (resulting, basically, in lower avoidance but higher mitigation, albeit mitigation via less damage), hoping to smooth out all these giant spikey hits while still creating a risk that the tank will die.

What It Is Not

This is not a worse nerf for druids than other tanks. Let me repeat myself: druids will not suffer worse from this nerf than other tanks. “But druids can only dodge!” you might say. Well, let’s take a look here.

Theoretical (i.e. made up) Avoidance Outside Icecrown

Class	Dodge	Parry	Total Avoidance
Warrior	30%	20%	50%
Druid	50%	0%	50%

Adjusted with 20% Less Dodge

Class	Dodge	Parry	Total Avoidance
Warrior	10%	20%	30%
Druid	30%	0%	30%

It’s easy to see that both tanks end up with the same amount of total avoidance. Now, you could go and make arguments about dodge being better than parry for certain tanks, etc. etc. but the main point is that other tanks are being hit just as hard as druids.

Another Note on Gear and Item Level

Guys, just because new gear has a higher item level does not always mean it is better. Ghostcrawler has said time and time again that it’s not designed that way–gear should be a choice, you shouldn’t be able to train a monkey to buy all the newer, higher item level gear and be a better tank/healer/DPS than you were. (This is part of my issue with gear scores in general.)

This public service announcement provided to you by The Altoholic.

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Heroic/Raid Saves in 3.1

BinaryMuse — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:11:19 +0000

There are plenty of folks talking about the bosses on the PTR, the change to the hearthstone (link to blue post here ’cause it’s funny), dual-talent specs, and so forth, but today BRK posted a picture that piqued my interest, and not because of the numbers in the center of the screen, but rather the little box at the top:

Now that’s what I’m talking about! A way to know that you’re going to be saved to a raid or heroic before it actually happens–and you even get a “Leave Instance” button so you don’t have to make a mad dash for the exit! This is quite possibly my favorite 3.1 change so far.

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New GM Chat Interface

BinaryMuse — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:23:44 +0000

This was reported by MMO Champion, and I’m reporting it here as well in hopes that it will help people recognize scammers, and inform them of this important change.

In patch 3.0.8, a new interface will be used to chat with game masters. Check out the post on MMO Champion for the details!

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Patch 3.0.8 Notes Updated – Highlights

BinaryMuse — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:15:44 +0000

Patch 3.0.8 is bring a lot of bug fixes and balancing to the expansion. The patch notes have not officially been updated, but there is a post on the forums that list them all. Without focusing on class-specific changes (excepting Raise Dead, as it could potentially affect everyone!), here are some of the highlights (at least in my opinion):

General Changes

Players may now create death knights on any realm once they reach level 55.
Tapping: All player spells which cause a creature to become aggressive to you will now also immediately cause the creature to be tapped.
The Darkmoon Faire vendors have new items now that trade routes into Northrend have been better established.

Death Knight

Raise Dead has now been split into two spells:
- Raise Dead now raises a ghoul or pet ghoul (if talented). Requires corpse dust if no humanoid corpse is nearby.
- Raise Ally now raises a fallen party member as a ghoul and has no reagent. Available at level 72. This should now last for 4 minutes.

Alchemy

All flasks no longer require an alchemy lab to create.
The Cooldown on Transmute: Titanium has been reduced to 1 day, and the materials required have been simplified.
Reduced the cooldown on Northrend Alchemy Research from 7 days to 3 days.

Mining

Mining veins and deposits no longer require multiple hits to receive all the ore. Players will receive around the same amount of ore, stone, and gems they would have received from multiple hits.

Quests

The daily quest, “Shoot ‘Em Up” now only requires 15 Jotunheim Proto-Drakes to be shot down, down from 20. As well, the harpoon now only costs 5 energy to shoot, (down from 10.)

User Interface

Chat frames can now be made “Noninteractive”. When in this state, they will ignore all clicks.
Various filters can now be applied to Achievements.
A special UI for chatting with GMs has been added.

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PTR 3.0.8 Live

BinaryMuse — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:30:40 +0000

As you may have guess from the title of this post, PTR 3.0.8 is now live. All the changes that have been disucssed since Wrath launched that were to come out “in a patch before the Ulduar content patch” are in here. Some notable changes:

General

Racial restrictions on mounts have now been lifted. Night elves on mechanostrider? Tauren on raptor? You’re not seeing things.
Tapping: All player spells which cause a creature to become aggressive to you will now also immediately cause the creature to be tapped.

Druids

Feral Attack Power: All weapons now have the potential to grant feral attack power based on their dps (as compared to the best superior-quality weapons available at level 60). Players will see their existing feral weapons grant roughly the same attack power as they did before (+/- 2 or so), but many new weapons will be options for the feral druid. Some feral weapons have had strength converted to attack power to be more appealing to other classes able to equip them. All druids will see the amount of feral attack power granted by an item in the item tooltip, if it grants any, but other players will not see that information.

Warlock

Ritual of Summoning: Will now create a summoning portal object which can be re-used for multiple summons for 5 minutes.

Warrior

Fury: Titan’s Grip: The hit chance penalty has been removed.

These are just a few of a large number of enhancements, bug fixes, and other additions (including new achievements and associated rewards). MMO Champion has the full scoop.

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