The Ultimate Horde Fan Site For World Of Warcraft

Reminder – Merge Battle.net accounts
Just a reminder for all players that starting tomorrow November 11th, you must merge you WoW account with your battle.net account or else you will not be able to play until you do so. It takes less than one minute guys just do it and get it over with =)
Helpful Links

• Battle.net (US, EU, KR)
• Battle.net FAQ (US, EU, KR)

Patch issues with Tools – Please Read

Quote from: Eyonix (Source)

We are aware that since the latest tools patch, some players are receiving the error, “unable to validate game version” when attempting to login to the game. In order to resolve this issue, you most allow the launcher to run so the appropriate update can be applied. Another issue that we’ve identified is preventing players from running the launcher while wow.exe is open. This is preventing players from running multiple iterations of World of Warcraft. As a temporary work-around, until this issue is resolved, simply run the second game instance by opening wow.exe directly from your World of Warcraft folder.

If your download fails, please wait a few moments and try again. We hope to have these issues corrected shortly, and appreciate your understanding.

Pugging With Blue once again!
Pugging with the blues again! They actually want you to come join in on the fun just read below!

Quote from: Zarhym (Source)

Since our first test went so well, we’d like to invite everyone out again for round 2! Come join the fun on the PTR; and instead of looting the PUG blues, you could end up with a PUG blue (see what we did there?). Members of the Development Team (including the encounter designers themselves), the QA team, and the Community Team will be on the PTRs to test out the new dungeon system and want you to come join in the fun.

To have a chance to group up with one of us, just queue up for a random Heroic through the Dungeon tool. We will be playing both Alliance and Horde, and since the Dungeon tool allows players to group cross-server, it doesn’t matter which of the two PTR realms you join from.

Join us Wednesday 11/11/09 at 4:00pm PST. We’ll see you then!

Blue Posts

Vanity Pets with stats (Source)

We enjoy adding things into the game that just add flavor and aren’t part of any min-maxing discussions. The non-combat pets are one of these things and so are things like titles. As soon as we put some stats on them the purpose changes entirely and anything without the ideal stats becomes “worthless”. Imagine if the cockroaches had the best stats and you see 25 of them in a raid… kinda weird.

Tank DPS (Source)

We wanted to boost tank dps even when tanking and wanted tanks to care a little more about dps stats. That was more important in earlier tiers than now — as the dps keep stacking damage and the tanks keep stacking stamina it’s understandable if the gap grows wider.

We still want tanks to care more about dps stats as secondary stats, but we’re not sure making threat difficult to manage is a good way to do it and we’re not sure making the tank dps critical for beating enrage timers is a good way to do it either.

Does the new Dungeons tool actually help the problem of finding groups? (Source)

Just a couple of observations from our point of view:

1) Players who don’t pug dramatically underestimate the number of people who do.
2) Players often assume every realm has the same dynamics that their realm has.

Pugging is something an awful lot of players do and our (frankly inadequate) tool didn’t facilitate that experience very well. The new tool is pretty fast and simple. If you enjoy pugging (or don’t enjoy it but do it anyway ) the new tool should let you spend less time organizing and more time killing (or wiping ).

If pugging isn’t your thing, that’s cool. We’re not trying to push you into it… unless you really like pugs (by which I mean the pooch). The tool will also benefit premades.

3.3 Oculus Changes (Source)

As is evidenced in this thread, players have strong opinions on Oculus in contrast to the majority of the other Wrath of the Lich King dungeons. With the implementation of the new Dungeon system and Random Dungeon option in patch 3.3, many players were asking for the ability to black list at least one dungeon from the selection pool. If a large number of players want to black list Oculus because they don’t find it enjoyable — and it can often times be a pick-up group killer — we view that as a problem. We do not, however, see a viable solution in giving players the ability to simply remove any dungeon they want from the Random Dungeon rotation. That takes away from the idea of randomness. In addition, we feel the benefits afforded players when running random Heroic dungeons (extra emblems, the chance to run a specific Heroic instance more than once a day, etc.) are too good to let them narrow down the list as they see fit.

As a compromise, we’ve made the standard fights in Oculus a bit easier, and increased the benefits of item-based vehicle scaling to make the drake combat less cumbersome. We hope these changes deter players from deserting a random dungeon when it happens to be Oculus.

Is the Emblem of Frost random dungeon the same all day? (Source)

I don’t think we’d want to go that far, but it is worth noting that the Random Dungeon option will not take into account dungeons players have deserted or completed when repeatedly selecting this option. Those in this thread claiming they will still refuse to run the dungeon and desert it whenever it is selected at random run the risk of killing a lot of time with the Deserter debuff should Oculus be randomly selected often, as it has just as much chance of being randomly chosen as any other dungeon. If, say, it is randomly selected four times in a row, that is a total 1 hour of time wasted with a Deserter debuff in addition to the time it takes to put together each group. Whether or not one equally enjoys all Wrath of the Lich King dungeons, that’s a weird price to pay for what will be a relatively easy and quick dungeon run in patch 3.3.

Hunter

Will Focus as a resource really make a difference? (Source)

If you ignore combo points (which we aren’t planning on adding to hunters), then the biggest decision energy-users face is whether to use a single 60 energy attack or two 30 energy attacks. The answer depends on a lot of variables, including which does more damage, what is on cooldown, the synergy between the abilities, etc.

If you consider the cat druid (because it’s slightly simpler) and ignore finishing moves, then the druid rotation would look something like getting up a +bleed attack, applying a bleed dot, getting up a +damage buff, and then doing the actual damage. You could imagine something similar like that for hunters. I don’t mean hunters are going to be a +bleed class, but more that the choice of what attack to push next should have some decision behind it. It won’t just be Serpent Sting x 1, Chimera Shot x 1000. Repeat.

Also most of the answers quoted above were from Blizzcon. These answers fall into three basic categories: things we know we’re going to do, things we’d like to do, and things we hadn’t really thought about before someone asked a question (e.g. taming mounts).

Also, Enhancement shamans will almost certainly stay as mana-users but still share (non Int) gear with hunters. This likely means some kind of attack power to mana regen mechanic like Ret paladins have currently. However development on stuff like this is still early.

Hunter rotations in Cataclysm (Source)

I said ignore the finishers, so that removes Rip and FB. You are left with a bleed (Rake), a bleed buffer (Mangle), a damage buff (SR) and then the actual attack, Shred. Someone unfamiliar with kitties might say “Oh I’ll just use all my energy on Shred, because it does the most dps” the way someone unfamiliar with focus-based hunters might say “Oh I’ll just use all my focus on Chimera / Explosive once they aren’t on cooldowns.” Our plan is to make the rotation have more depth than that. It won’t be at the Feral level of complexity without cps and finishers and because hunters have other things to manage, like Fluffy.

Cooldowns on Chimera Shot / Explosive Shot (Source)

Sorry, I meant if we remove the cooldown from those shots then someone might jump to the conclusion that hunters will just spam them. I don’t know if we will be able to remove the cooldown or not. Shred does not have a cooldown yet Ferals use many other abilities. That is one way to go. Another is to keep a small cooldown, but in general we think focus will let us take cooldowns off a lot of hunter abilities since the income rate of focus will help us balance the costs.

In general (and with many exceptions) you can’t balance mana-using spells around cost since casters have nearly unlimited mana at any point in time and certainly early on in a fight. Energy (and focus, and rage to a much lesser extent to where it’s actually a problem) are limited at any given moment but come back pretty quickly. Mana-spells have to be balanced around cast times and cooldowns instead. Hunters generally lack cast times, so most abilities have cooldowns which lead to annoying collisions and a lot of timer-watching. Focus should help improve that. We hope!

Rogue

Rogue Weapon Swapping (Source)

As some players are pointing out, it’s not the existence of an add-on that’s the issue. It’s what this means for playing a rogue. We don’t want to see the “How to play a rogue FAQ” that starts “Step One. Download the weapon swapping add-on.”

It’s one thing if it’s a niche deal that generates a marginal dps increase. It’s another if rogues feel like they have to play with the add-on.

We’re still not convinced this will become super mainstream, but we’ll see. I said before it’s a concern and it’s still a concern.

Warlock

Regarding Doomguards (Source)

Singling out the Doomguard for just a moment…

Are you saying you don’t mind giving up your Imp or Felhound for the Doomguard? Are you talking like on a long cooldown or not? Because really with shorter cooldowns now my concern would be that every boss attempt you’d have the Doomguard out. In which case who would use the Felhound?

With guardians as a short-term guardian that doesn’t replace your current demon it’s easier to carve off a niche. Once they replace the Imp, Felhound, Felguard, Voidwalker, Succubus, then it’s tricker to make work.