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[EU] Patch 3.1.0 PTR Testing - General Vezax General Vezax will be tested on European PTRs on Monday Night, March 16, starting at 19:00 CET. Streams and loot/abilities updates will be available as soon as the testing starts, for more info please check the news post of the <a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=42807.0" target="_blank">latest PTR testing</a>. Check also the <a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=43832.0" target="_blank">Ulduar Loot List</a>. (This one will be updated very soon) [US] Patch 3.1.0 PTR Testing - Ignis the Furnace Master Ignis the Furnace Master will be tested on American PTRs on Monday Night, March 16, starting at 7pm EDT/4pm PDT. Streams and loot/abilities updates will be available as soon as the testing starts, for more info please check the news post of the <a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=43380.0" target="_blank">latest Ignis PTR testing</a>. Check also the <a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=43832.0" target="_blank">Ulduar Loot List</a>. (This one will be updated very soon) Recent In-Game Fixes <div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><div class="blizzquoteheader">Quote from: Bornakk (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/23/15668071374-recent-ingame-fixes--31409.html" target="_blank" style="color: white;">Source</a>)</div><div class="blizzquote">Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game. 3/14/09 <ul style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;"><li>Level restrictions have been applied to Lake Wintergrasp. Only players level 70 or higher can count towards the tenacity tally or obtain the tenacity buff and get credit for victory or defeat. In addition, only players level 50 or higher will be able to use the portal to Wintergrasp.</li></ul></div></div></div> Blue posts <div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><div class="blizzquoteheader">Quote from Blizzard staff</div><div class="blizzquote">Raids & Dungeons - Hard Mode Ulduar has a ton of bosses. While I'm sure some players would love for us to deliver an instance with that level of content every month or so (and throw in a 5-player run to boot!), it's not in the cards, at least not for the next couple of years. Instead, what we tried to do with Ulduar is offer a lot of different ways to play the encounters. While the progress-oriented guilds may clear it quickly, we hope that some of the hard modes will offer them a lot to chew on. All of the players who are somewhere between barely being able to clear the instance and the "world first" crowd should be able to find a comfortable difficulty level as well. Your old model towards end game was a success, it brought you eleven million players. Most of whom never had a chance to finish a raid. They didn't get to see some of the best art in the game, hear the unique music or voice over, or in many cases even see the villian at the end of their quest line. From a production POV, instances are very expensive. It seems an odd choice to lavish all that attention on such a tiny percent of the player base. At the same time, we know there are players who love a challenge and are willing to do almost anything to beat a raid-destroying boss provided they also have a shot at the best loot. They don't want the instances to be over too soon. They like banging their head against the wall. And so hard modes were born. We tested the water a little with Obsidian Sanctum. We're going full bore with Ulduar. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/15657790557-will-31-be-a-success.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Raids & Dungeon - Raid Composition As you well know, assuming you read the thread, this was a case of a class or spec wanting a unique buff to guarantee them a raid spot. It wasn't enough to bring *a* buff. They wanted a unique buff such that their guild would say, for example, "We have to take a Retribution paladin or we'll be really behind." In BC, you "had" to have warlocks to bring Curse of Shadows (never mind that it mostly helped the warlocks) and you had to have a 2 or more Shadow Priests as a mana battery. The list of who you had to bring was so inflexible that doubling up (and in some cases even finding room for one player) was prohibitive. Ret is actually a great example. Their dps was fine, if they were in the right group and had all of the right buffs to prop up their damage. Problem was by the time you put those other 4 characters together, the Ret was the only person benefiting from those buffs and your dps would generally be higher with a rogue in that spot instead. Since the Ret dps in the caster group would be bad, there just wasn't much reason to bring the Ret at all. (Now there are exceptions and clearly Ret paladins did get to raid some of the time, but most Sunwell-level guilds know exactly what I am talking about.) Rather than just nerfing buffs to such a degree that you don't actually notice a power increase from being in a group, we spread all of the buffs around to multiple characters. Because there are no (or very few) unique buffs, you shouldn't have much problem finding someone to bring a necessary buff, even Replenishment, and honestly unless you are doing hard modes, you can probably do without a few of those buffs anyway. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/15668071380-gc-says-replenishment-nerf-inc.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Healers - Spirit regeneration and healing in Ulduar That was partially because OFSR was so potent back then. Honestly, we're not trying to recreate the MC days or healer rotations, though I can understand if some of you are nostalgic for them. In Ulduar, you should run out of mana if... 1) You don't have enough gear for the instance. 2) You aren't playing the encounter well enough. If you have good enough gear and good enough skill and aren't standing in fires and are kiting adds correctly and doing all the right things, then you aren't designed to run OOM. The reason we wanted to nerf regen is that having infinite mana was allowing too much of a buffer on those two factors (it allowed for too much "slop" in organization and execution). Take Saphiron as an example. When mana regen is very high, the dps can sit in the blizzards for a little while because the healers can just heal through it and make up enough mana when they get a clearcasting proc or are running for ice blocks (because OFSR regen was so good). In previous tiers of content, the guild probably would have had to farm the earlier bosses for several weeks to get enough gear to have a chance at the final few. Now Naxx was designed to be easy, and Ulduar isn't going to be a lot harder. Hard modes on the bosses though are designed to be very hard. That means being inefficient with mana has to be a liability instead of a tool used to make the content less challenging. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/15671261994-does-anyone-find-it-funny-that.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) <img src="http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/ideathknights.gif" alt="" border="0" /> Death Knight (<a href="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=650" target="_blank">Skills List</a> / <a href="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight" target="_blank">Talent + Glyph Calc.</a>) Death Knights are too good Death Knights are too good in 3.0.9. We think they are in a better place in 3.1. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/15671261989-no-you-are-wrong-about-death-knights.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Tanking with different specs Our intent is not to force DKs down one tanking tree any more than they were before. It's cool that Frost tanking is getting more attention, but I think the jury is still out on whether one build is so much better than another one that players feel that they have no options. We'll give the community a chance to chew on all of the changes (more are coming, though mostly for dps DKs) and see if our opinion changes. Since Unholy slightly emphasizes avoidance, Frost slightly emphasizes armor and Blood slightly emphasizes health, it's also likely that some builds will be more useful on some encounters compared to others. That isn't necessarily what we're going for, but it's a likely outcome, and again as long as the delta isn't too huge, it should work out fine. (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/26/15673100740-are-dk-tanks-being-pidgeonholed.html" target="_blank">Source</a>) Scent of Blood Some DKs felt like they were runic power starved for Rune Strike and other abilities while tanking. Others said it was their avoidance that was the problem and still others have no problem maintaining threat at all. If you need runic power, Scent of Blood is for you. I wouldn't consider it nearly as mandatory as something like Anticipation for a tanking build. But we'll see what the community ends up doing. I have tanked in the game a lot, and I have found cookie cutter builds to be less mandatory than the forums and articles often suggest. Certain *talents* are mandatory, but you nearly always have a few extra points to get what you want, depending a great deal on your gear and the group you run with. If you have great healers and never die, then you probably don't need as much survivability. If you have amazing and impatient dps, then you might want to emphasize threat more. Again personal experience here, but I have also found many tanks to be more reluctant to swap out gear per encounter than they should. Good tanks often swap out their rings, trinkets etc. from fight to fight. Again, just throwing that out there since I know the DK class attracted some players to tanking that have never tanked before. Your mileage may vary. Regardless, the talent was pretty lackluster with its current numbers. We nerfed it back in beta when DKs had so much rp while leveling that they just spammed Death Coil. Enough has changed that that may no longer be a problem, and DK leveling is pretty easy regardless. (Fonte