World Of Warcraft

Good thing I'm getting a new computer. Those graphics are getting better and better.

WoD raid testing begins on Monday!

Heroic: The Butcher in Highmaul at 1:40pm PDT.

Heroic: Gruul in Blackrock Foundry at 4pm PDT.

edited 19th Jul '14 7:33:05 PM by tclittle

Popping in to ask when people are going to realize that alternate-timeline-Cho'Gall◊ should not have a chest scar.

Maybe he got one somewhere else.

Maybe he got a near identical on in the two years since Garrosh popped up? Slightly rogue'd.

Spoilers at the end of the post!

DBZ reference!

Announcement on Facebook tomorrow.

There is a fourth Garrison upgrade, but it is only available by glitching.

Major spoiler for the end of Talador upcoming:

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Orgrim Doomhammer and Maahad are killed by Blackhand!

edited 19th Jul '14 8:28:52 PM by tclittle

Maybe Thrall will get to dual-wield both Doomhammers at some point?

So it turns out the surprise on Facebook is just a Beta key giveaway.

So far I'm just questing. Got to shadowmoon and got stuck on an endless load screen. Reported a few bugs at least. Even with my massively deflated stats everything dies too quickly to hot my stride in arcane

edited 20th Jul '14 4:19:18 PM by Lanceleoghauni

Looks like another CM gets to be a rare mob.◊ This one's in Gorgrond.

So, we get to kill Bashy? This game had my interest, now it has my attention.

Updated Beta Notes for July 22nd:

Raid Utility Balance

• Hunter
  • Aspect of the Fox is a new ability for all Hunters.
    • Aspect of the Fox: Party and raid members within 40 yards take on the aspects of a fox, allowing them to move while casting all spells for 6 seconds. Only one Aspect can be active at a time. 3 minute cooldown.
  • A minor Raid utility ability (to-be-determined) will be added for Hunters.

Crowd Control and Diminishing Returns

• A list of which Diminishing Returns category each crowd-control ability belongs to can be found in the forum thread titled: Diminishing Returns in Warlords of Draenor.

Classes

• Death Knight
  • Miscellanious
    • Conversion no longer has an initial tick, and now costs 15 Runic Power/second for Blood, 10 20 Runic Power/second for Frost, and 20 10 Runic Power/second for Unholy.

• Druid
  • Ability Consolidation and Refinment
    • Thick Hide has been removed and its effects have been incorporated into Bear Form for Guardian Druids.
      • Bear Form now increases armor by 600% 330% for all Druid specializations, and no longer increases Haste and Critical Strike from items by 50%, but instead causes Haste to reduce the global cooldown
      • For Guardian Druids, Bear Form now also reduces magical damage taken by 25%, reduces physical damage taken by 12%, reduces chance to be critically hit by 6%, and reduces chance for attacks to be parried by 3%.
    • Tiger’s Fury is now usable during Berserk.
  • Balance Changes
    • That's the basics of the new Moonkin rotation. There’s room for improvement beyond that, learning to optimally maintain both periodic damage effects while maximizing their damage with the strongest Eclipse effect, timing Starsurges to optimize the benefit of its buff, make use of Starfall and Hurricane for area damage, and taking advantage of the strengths of each side (such as Moonfire and Sunfire having significant differences now). Here are the full details of the changes.
      • Eclipse has been redesigned.
        • The damage of damage-over-time effects changes dynamically as Eclipse changes.
      • Moonfire now has a base duration of 20 seconds (up from 14 seconds), but is no longer extended by Starfire and Starsurge critical strikes. Upon reaching 100 Lunar Energy, the next Moonfire deals 100% additional initial damage.
      • Sunfire is no longer its own spell and replaces Moonfire on the action bar whenever Balance Energy is on the Solar side. Sunfire now has a base duration of 24 20 seconds (up from 14 seconds), but is no longer extended by Wrath and Starsurge critical strikes. Enemies may still suffer from both Moonfire and Sunfire’s periodic damage components simultaneously. Upon reaching 100 Solar Energy, the next Sunfire deals 100% additional initial damage.
  • Restoration Changes
    • Omen of Clarity (Restoration) can now only be triggered by the most recently applied Lifebloom, and now causes the next Regrowth to be free.

• Mage
  • Talent Revisions
    • Ice Ward was changed to make it more competitive with the rest of its talent row.
      • Ice Ward now causes the next 3 attackers (up from 1) to trigger a Frost Nova.
    • Mirror Image is now a level-90 Talent, replacing Invocation. Mirror Images now inherit 100% 50% of the Mage’s Spell Power (up from 5%), last 40 seconds (up from 30 seconds), and have a 2 minutes cooldown (down from 3 minutes).

• Paladin
  • Ability Consolidation and Refinement
    • Selfless Healer no longer causes Bastion of Glory to apply to Flash Heal.
  • Protection Changed
    • For Protection, we tweaked Eternal Flame in order to reduce its massive self-healing amount, and provide better balance between talents on that row. We also added a new passive, Shining Protector, in order to give defensive value to the new Multistrike stat. Holy Wrath’s damage and cooldown were also increased, and Sanctified Wrath changed to buff it further, in order to give Protection Paladins more burst threat and damage, while retaining its core damage-splitting identity.
      • Holy Wrath’s damage has been increased by 100%, and its cooldown increased to 15 seconds (up from 9 seconds).
      • Sanctified Wrath for Protection Paladins has been redesigned.
        • Sanctified Wrath (Protection) now increases the damage of Holy Wrath by 100% and causes it to generate 1 Holy Power.

• Warlock
  • Demonology Changes
    • We were unsatisfied with Grimoire of Sacrifice for Demonology. Fundamentally, it did not fit Demonology’s theme to sacrifice their pet, full time. We had toyed with ideas where it acted as a temporary cooldown for Demonology, but have decided to replace it with a new talent, which is more theme-appropriate, and fits well against the competition in that talent row.
      • Grimoire of Sacrifice is no longer available to Demonology Warlocks and has a new talent, Grimoire of Synergy in its place.
        • Grimoire of Synergy: When the Warlock or their demon deals damage, there is a chance to trigger Demonic Synergy, granting the other one 15% increased damage for 15 seconds.

• Warrior
  • Ability Consolodation and Refinement
    • Thunder Clap now costs 15 30 Rage, and also reduces the movement speed of nearby enemies by 50% for 6 sec.
  • Fury Changes
    • Fury Warriors received a few additional changes. In particular, Heroic Strike has been removed for Fury Warriors, and modified Wild Strike to fill the role of quick excess Rage dump. We also made a revision to the Critical Strike chance of Bloodthirst to make them less crit-dependant. A new glyph has been added which gives Fury Warriors a choice for a notably different playstyle. Auto attack damage had become too high, so we also moved some damage from that into Execute (which has been changed to deal damage based on Weapon Damage, instead of just Attack Power). In order to make sure that you’re able to spend all of your resources within each Colossus Smash window, we added an extension to it onto Raging Blow. Plus, we've updated some to spell alerts to improve usability.
      • Raging Blow now extends the duration of Colossus Smash by 2 seconds, and has a spell alert on the left and right slots.

edited 22nd Jul '14 4:55:35 PM by tclittle

Double posting due to animations:

Fem!Undead

Fem!Draenai

Ever heard of the Pandaren who made Level 90 by staying in the starting zone? No? Well, you have now.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/13204930582

Much kudos to Doubleagent.

That is awesome.

"What is this "Warcraft" of which you speak? I am Pandaren. I am above such puny mortal concerns. Now, where's that Earthroot node?"

I heard he achieved enlightenment.

In Real Life.

You can change the look of the enchant on your weapon if you have an enchantment hut in your garrison.

edited 24th Jul '14 4:11:56 AM by tclittle

I like the enchantment thing.

The pandaren to 90 thing is commendable on a dedication thing...not so philosophically speaking.

Wow. Possibly the worst models in the game, have become amazing.

edited 24th Jul '14 11:27:00 AM by Rotpar

They have buffed them up some. That does look much better.

You could say they were...beefed up.

edited 24th Jul '14 12:10:45 PM by Aszur

I personally like the Tauren cows much better than the bulls, both for the posture and looking more like a bovine (no protruding teeth, smaller hunch, and more proportioned muscles). Though the hands were definitely too big.

The new model is orders of magnitude better, though perhaps not as feminine as it should be.

There's something a bit odd about people insisting on "femininity" in anthropomorphic cow-people.

Well, shit. They've cut Tanaan Jungle from launch (excluding the opening questline) and will release it in a content patch.

But why? I thought it would be the first part of Draenor you visit.

What we heard before was that you'd enter there, do some epic storyline stuff (probably following around a known hero NPC), and then get booted to some other zone. It's always been intended as max level content, because that's where the Dark Portal is and our ultimate goal is to close it. The only difference now is that it'll be an even more end-game zone.