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In-Game Fixes – December 17th, 2009
Last night there were a few more hotfixes applied to the live realms, including a ‘nerf’ (that could also be considered a bug fix) to Sweeping Strikes and how it interacts with Bladestorm.
Yesterday there were a few fixes made to the live realms. One of which included a nerf to sweeping strikes and how it interacts with bladestorm for the warrior class.

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

12/17/09

• Everlasting Affliction can now refresh the duration of Corruption on a target when the Warlock casts Drain Soul.
• Sweeping Strikes will now only trigger once per whirlwind rotation of Bladestorm.
• Players will now receive appropriate credit for the Full House achievement.

New Euro Realms & Free Character Transfers
There were a couple new player realms added for european players, also along with this comes an opportunity to server change your character to a different realm for free, just thought you guys would like to hear it just in case some of you wanted to switch realms. =)

Quote from: Vaneras (Source)

New Player realms
Normal/PvE: Terokkar
PvP: Karazhan
RP: Darkmoon Faire
RP PvP: Sporeggar

Free Character Migration (FCM)
The below FCM is available until December the 22nd. All migrations are faction restricted to improve ratios on involved realms, thus your faction is currently the less populated one on the destination realm.

From: Argent Dawn
To: Darkmoon Faire and The Sha’tar

Alliance only:
From: Ravencrest and Sylvanas
To: Auchindoun, Karazhan and Shattered Halls

Horde only:
From: Draenor
To: Nagrand and Terokkar

Please note: FCM is opened based on realm population tracking and analysis, not by request. If you’re looking for a specific migration (from realm A to realm B), you are in most cases better off using Paid Character Transfer, or you could end up waiting for a very long time.

Paid Character Transfers (PCT)
All English realms follow the regular PCT rules, found here:
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/faq/paidcharactertransfer.html

Blue Posts

On stationary fights, what class should do the best DPS? (Source)

To be honest, I’m not sure the answer to that question would be very helpful. You stipulate when skill, gear, latency, raid comp and everything else is equal and you stipulate a tank and spank fight with no movement, adds or other considerations. Those two situations are going to be virtually impossible to ever encounter in the actual game, so the information isn’t that useful anyway except to know where we’re coming from philosophically.

On the other hand, it carries some amount of gunk-up-the-forums risk. If we said night elf rogues and blacksmith Shadow priests are designed to be the best in those situations, I am fairly certain we would see posts for the next several months that say “I play a blacksmith Shadow priest and this is supposed to be the fight I win, which I am not, so please buff.”

My suggestion is to worry more about how to improve your individual dps, which you can almost certainly do, and less about whether you’re being held back by class mechanics, which you have very little control over.

If you want an answer to the actual question, I would look at those classes and specs whose mechanics benefit from stationary, single targets.

Top DPS lists (Source)

Be careful how you analyze those “highest dps ever” lists.

1) Highest dps ever does not mean those results are reproducible. Most players would rather do consistently high damage all of the time than ridiculously high damage once under a blue moon. You can’t just look at those “scoreboards” and get a feel for what the average rogue does, just because 50 of them (or whatever the number is) can squeeze out some impressive numbers when they get lucky / the stars align.

2) It’s unfortunately going to be a few weeks before all the pre-nerf Mutilate and Unholy parses get watered down by the post-nerf numbers.

Weapon proc enchants for casters (Source)

We recognize that weapon enchants (and even weapons in general) aren’t as exciting for casters and healers specifically as they are for melee. Procs are certainly one way to address that problem, and it’s something we’re taking a hard look at. As several players have pointed out though, they aren’t trivial to design. Proc’ing damage is generally useful for a damage-dealer. Proc’ing a heal is unreliable at best and often just wasted.

Player versus Player

The PvP gearing system and how it compares to PvE’s version (Source)

The PvP gearing system is actually pretty similar to the PvE gearing system. If you’re awesome, you have access to the best gear. If you’re not as awesome, *or* if you’re new, then you don’t have access to that gear, but you have access to the gear just a tier behind. Next season you’ll have access to the new gear, but the better players will have access to even better gear, and so on.

Yes, you’re going to have more of a challenge competing against players with the best gear, but it’s not an insurmountable advantage and the system won’t completely starve you of the ability to get the best gear even if you lose a lot.

Rated BGs are not designed to give players who just want to lose their way through a bunch of battlegrounds Gladiator-level loot. They’re designed for players who don’t like the small, short, duel-ish feeling of Arena but still like coordinated, competitive play. (I also expect there will be a lot of overlap between the two.) If rated BGs aren’t for you or you just can’t compete for some reason, you still have access to the previous season’s gear (and you can even get it through PvE progression).

Classes

Death Knight

Are DK talent trees “dull”? (Source)

DK trees are a little unusual because they lack a lot of the “reduces cost” or “reduces cooldown” talents that most every other spec has.

Warrior

Sweeping Strikes and Bladestorm: Is it worth using it while Bladestorm is up? (Source)

We are in fact keeping the interaction. SS will still be worth hitting when Bladestorm is up. What it will not do is hit one target 4 (or in some cases even more) times. The stand alone ability Whirlwind had this bullet-proofing as part of the spell, but the new whirlwinds created as part of Bladestorm did not. We think this is one of the main causes of the “Bladestorm blowed me up” feedback.