The Ultimate Horde Fan Site For World Of Warcraft

2vs2 Arena Titles
I guess it looks like some people were getting arena titles for their 2vs2 Rating, which shouldn’t have been happening.

Quote from: Eyonix (Source)

Select players in the 2v2 bracket were mistakenly awarded end-of-season awards and titles. This was due to a game bug, and not at all intentional. We will be removing the mistaken awards and titles. For some players this will occur upon logging out. For others we will correct the error on the next maintenance period.

We are very sorry for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused.

Night Elf Mohawk is gone!
Hopefully you guys all got the chance to use a Mohawk Grenade! LOL

Quote from: Crygil (Source)

You’ve pitied and you’ve been pitied, but the time has come for the Night Elf Mohawk to pack up his Mohawk Grenades and move on. You looked goooood while his visit lasted, Azeroth, but his work here is done…for now.

Blue Posts

Tanking Quel’Delar (Source)

We talked about this back when the quest was available on the PTR, but in short, we are not adding a tanking specific weapon to the rewards table for this quest. We did not forget tanks, we just weren’t aiming the rewards at them.

Season 8 delay (Source)

Because information in the next minor content patch is needed to start it and the patch is not out yet. Are you pretty comfortable with the new resilience change already?

3.x patch cycle and class balance (Source)

We have made a few mistakes in the 3.X patch cycle where we over-buffed or over-nerfed a spec. Aside from the risk that we’ll have to revert some of the changes, it just sucks when say all hunters felt like they had to go Survival or all mages felt like they had to go Arcane. Ideally your spec would be a choice, but we feel like the second best scenario is to not keep changing which spec is on top (especially when that requires you to re-gear, etc.).

Players also tend to have different expectations for dps than we do. It’s typical now for anyone who doesn’t see their dps at 10,000 (or to see simulation output that suggests 10,000) to assume that something is wrong with their class.

You can’t balance content around just the best players (Source)

We believe you can’t just balance around the best players. It’s possible for a class to be too good among less-skilled players (perhaps because it is easy to play) or too good among highly-skilled players (perhaps because only they can get the full benefit out of it). You need to look at players at a variety of skill levels.

You also have to be very careful trying to correlate population with power. I’m sure there is a correlation, but it might not be a very strong one, at least in PvE. It is probably more true of PvP. In PvE, a lot of other factors can influence population. Most new players to WoW have a pretty good idea of what a warrior or mage is, but may not understand the mechanics or role of a shaman or warlock. Some players just gravitate towards certain mechanics and find others bland or frustrating. Players can make life-long decisions about their class based on things as non-power-gamery as art or possible races.

Where we tend to take notice is if something is really far out of whack. If players are abandoning a class or flocking to a new one, then there might be something going on. If particular classes or specs seem to fall behind in raid representation over time, it’s usually in our best interest to at least try and understand why.

Our community, especially the active online component, has become very obsessed with class equality over the course of Lich King. I’m sure some of that is the increasing sophistication and maturity (in the sense of understanding mechanics) of the player base. (Remember, a lot more players are running heroics and especially raids than ever before in WoW’s history.) I’m sure another is partially the fault of myself and other developers for being relatively more vocal about our design goals and intent. Overall, I think the community would be healthier if it focused more on boss strategies and less on intra-class competition, but I understand that a competitive streak is something that goes hand in hand with being a hardcore gamer.

Blizzard gave away the stats on the new Ashen Verdict strength rings last week, along with updated stats for the tier-10 tank sets check it out!

Ashen Verdict Rings

Quote from: Zarhym (Source)

Here are the stats for the strength-based melee DPS rings coming in the next minor patch:

Requires The Ashen Verdict – Friendly

Ashen Band of Might

+91 Stength
+91 Stamina
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 53.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 53.

Requires The Ashen Verdict – Honored

Ashen Band of Greater Might

+98 Stength
+98 Stamina
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 57.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 57.

Requires The Ashen Verdict – Revered

Ashen Band of Unmatched Might

+98 Stength
+98 Stamina
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 57.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 57.
Equip: Chance on hit to increase your attack power by 480 for 10 sec.

Requires The Ashen Verdict – Exalted

Ashen Band of Endless Might

+99 Stength
+107 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +4 Strength
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 59.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 59.
Equip: Chance on hit to increase your attack power by 480 for 10 sec.

Tier 10 Tank Sets

Quote from: Zarhym (Source)

Here are examples of how the set pieces will be changing in the next minor patch:

Current Warrior Tier-10 Pieces (item level 251)

Ymirjar Lord’s Handguards

1579 Armor
+81 Strength
+148 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 71.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 63.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 54.

Ymirjar Lord’s Breastplate

2526 Armor
+144 Strength
+191 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +9 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 76.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 68.
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 68.

Updated Warrior Tier-10 Pieces (item level 251)

Ymirjar Lord’s Handguards

2461 Armor
+81 Strength
+148 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 71.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 54.

Ymirjar Lord’s Breastplate

3590 Armor
+144 Strength
+191 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +9 Stamina
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 60.
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 76.

Current Death Knight Tier-10 Pieces (item level 251)

Scourgelord Handguards

1579 Armor
+81 Strength
+148 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 71.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 63.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 54.

Scourgelord Chestguard

2526 Armor
+144 Strength
+191 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Strength
Equip: Increases defense rating by 60.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 76.
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 76.

Updated Death Knight Tier-10 Pieces (item level 251)

Scourgelord Handguards

2461 Armor
+81 Strength
+148 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 71.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 54.

Scourgelord Chestguard

3590 Armor
+144 Strength
+191 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Strength
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 60.
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 76.

Current Paladin Tier-10 Pieces (item level 251)

Lightsworn Handguards

1579 Armor
+81 Strength
+148 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 71.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 63.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 54.

Lightsworn Chestguard

2526 Armor
+144 Strength
+191 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +9 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 76.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 60.
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 76.

Updated Paladin Tier-10 Pieces (item level 251)

Lightsworn Handguards

2461 Armor
+81 Strength
+148 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 71.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 54.

Lightsworn Chestguard

3590 Armor
+144 Strength
+191 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +9 Stamina
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 60.
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 76.



PvE Realm?

Quote from: Wryxian (Source)

As part of our continued efforts to balance the World of Warcraft player population across all realms, we will be converting one of our lower-population European PvP realms — Vek’nilash — to a Normal PvE realm. For players on Vek’nilash, we will be offering free Character Moves to alternate PvP realms both before and after the conversion takes place. This will allow us to continue to support healthy communities on the realms and help new players transition easily into the community.

The conversion will take place on February 10, with the Character Moves opening on January 27 and lasting until March 10. Upon being converted to Normal PvE, Vek’nilash will be given the “New Players” flag to ensure an influx of players over the coming weeks.

For any questions, please refer to the main thread in the Vek’nilash realm forum:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=12304662580&sid=1

Patch 3.3.2 notes from Korean WoW Page

World of Warcraft Client Patch 3.3.2

Dungeons and Raids

• Icecrown Citadel
  • Frostwing Hall and the Frozen Throne have been added.  However, before players can access it the Ashen Verdict must shatter the Lich King’s final barrier.
• Halls of Stone
  • Brann Bronzebeard will now move more quickly during his escort event.
• Forge of Souls
  • Devourer of Souls will cast Mirrored Soul less frequently.
  • Some monsters in the instance which have Spell Reflect will cast it less frequently, now have cast times, and reflect chance has been reduced to 75% from 100%.
• The Nexus
  • Anomalus will now only cast Create Rift once.
• Ahn’kahet, the Old Kingdom
  • Elder Nadox will now only spawn one Ahn’kahar Guardian.
  • Jedoga’s Shadowseeker’s air phase will now only occur once.
  • Some of the creatures between Jedoga Shadowseeker and Herald Volazj have been removed.
• Pit of Saron
  • Dead players can now enter the instance during the Krick and Ick and Forgemaster Garfrost encounters.
• Utgarde Pinnacle
  • Skadi the Ruthless will now dismount after 3 harpoon strikes, down from 5.
  • Svala Sorrowgrave will now only perform her ritual once.
• Vault of Archavon
  • Toravon the Ice Watcher has been added for both 10- and- 25-player difficulties.
• Violet Hold
  • Reduced the wait time for portals to open after defeating bosses.

Player versus Player

• Season 8 is now underway with new rewards to be obtained!

Druid

• Talents
  • Balance
    • Earth and Moon – Now increases spell damage by 2/4/6% (Up from 1/2/3%).

Shaman

• Talents
  • Elemental
    • Shamanism – This talent now increases your Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning spell damage by 4/8/12/16/20% (Up from 3/6/9/12/15%) and Lava Burst spell damage by 5/10/15/20/25% (Up from 4/8/12/16/20%)

Warlock

• Talents
  • Affliction
    • Shadow Embrace – Now stacks up to 3 times.  Healing reduction effect has been reduced to 2/4/8/10% to compensate.
  • Demonology
    • Demonic Pact – This talent now increases your spell damage by 2/4/6/8/10% (Up from 1/2/3/4/5%).  Effect to raid or party members remains the same.
  • Destruction
    • Conflagrate – Periodic spell damage has been increased to 40% (Up from 20%)
    • Empowered Imp – Increases damage done by Imp by 10/20/30% (Up from 5/10/15%)
    • Improved Shadow Bolt – Now increases Shadow Bolt damage by 2/4/6/8/10% (Up from 1/2/3/4/5%)

Warrior

• Shield Slam – Damage bonus from block value decreased for players with lower end equipment.  Players with high-end equipment will not notice as much of a difference.  In addition, threat generated has been increased by 30%.
• Talents
  • Protection
    • Concussion Blow – Damage has been reduced by 50%, but a threat modifier has been added to compensate.
    • Devastate – Weapon damage increased to 120% (Up from 100%)
    • Warbringer – This talent no longer allows Charge and Intercept to break roots or snares. Intervene remains unaffected.

User Interface

• The party leader role when using the Dungeon Finder has been renamed.
• Promoted raid members can now perform ready checks.

Items

• The Ashen Verdict now offers a strength version of their rings to players with proper reputation levels.
• Tier-10 Shaman Elemental 4-piece redesigned: Lava Burst will now increase your Flame Shock’s duration on the target by 6 seconds.

Weekly Maintenance with no Patch!?

Quote from: Draocel (Source)

We will be performing scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, January 26. Maintenance will begin at 05:00 AM PST and conclude at approximately 11:00 AM PST. During this time, all realms and many web services will be unavailable.

Thank you for your patience.

Threat Generation: Single Target vs Aoe

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)

A few things:

1) We’re much more concerned about tank single target dps than we are tank AE dps. Especially in Icecrown, there are virtually no fights where the tank’s dps contribution on an AE fight is really going to amount to much. You can make an argument that the single target dps can be relevant on e.g. Festergut (though again, I still don’t think there are that many cases where the difference between success and fail are the tank’s dps).

2) You may find Devastate boring, but Devastate is a very easy ability to buff because even small tweaks have large effects given how often it is used. Buffing say Shield Slam (or even Def Stance) would make the PvP balance we’re trying to solve even worse. You’d have to buff Revenge enormously to see a difference. Any buff to Heroic Strike affects dps warriors in PvE as well who aren’t hurting at all. Some of the ideas about e.g. Rend are interesting, but we’re pretty sure the last thing the warrior needs is yet another ability to manage while tanking. Long term that might be the kind of thing we consider, but given that we’re looking for a safe and easy buff, that’s not the kind of thing we want to mess with now. (Consider that even if we did a PTR, who is going to be on there when the competition is new bosses in Icecrown?)

3) There are differences in how tanks generate AE threat, and therefore damage. Warriors are jealous of the DK and especially paladin persistent area-based damage, and the others are jealous of the warrior’s burst AE threat on incoming adds. Druids are jealous of anyone with more than one button.

So, yes, one way of handling this is to give every tank a burst AE attack like Thunderclap, a sustained AE attack like Consecrate, and a mass taunt like Challenging Shout just for good measure. That’s the kind of thing we are really reluctant to do though because it just works against the justification for having 4 tanking classes when they all perform the same way including using the same kind of tools. Now, on the other hand no tank should be horribly gimped in any of those situations, and except for rare exceptions they really aren’t. We’re mostly talking quality of life issues here. (One such exception: DK offtanks on Yogg had trouble picking up adds and the dps couldn’t afford to wait. As long as there aren’t a ton of fights like this though, we don’t think it’s a systemic flaw.)

4) Long-term, the paladin manner of generating AE damage and threat is probably too good, especially given how simple it is. To be honest, we have very mixed feelings on the whole AE tanking game. We brought the druid and warrior more in line with the paladin for fear of recreating the Shattered Halls / Mount Hyjal experience, where other tanks just weren’t competitive. What that has led to of course is the AE tank + AE style of damage for almost every pull. You need the tools to be able to tank legitimate adds fights (imagine lots of incoming mobs), but does that mean every pull needs to devolve into that? We’d like to see less AE overall, so buffing everyone’s AE tools isn’t going to be tops on our agenda. That does however mean that we really can’t afford to have a “best AE tank”, and while things are more fair there than they were in BC, they aren’t fair enough.

Sorry for going off topic here, but these kinds of questions have come up a lot lately, so I figured I’d just share some of our discussions publicly.

Video of Blood Queen Lana’thel!

The Invincible Music

The new Battlecry Mosaic tile was released last night.  This time it isn’t images though; it’s a music piece called Invincible, it’s about Arthas’ mount that died during his youth, but is back from the dead to serve him even in death!

Blue Posts

Resilience changes requires a server restart (Source)

There was some confusion on our end so here is the clarification on this change going live.

The hotfix is live, but it requires a server restart before it will actually affect your gear. Some of your realms have been restarted for various reasons, but some have not. They will all get restarted at the next maintenance period (typically Tuesday AM in the US). We might go ahead and restart all servers just so that we know everyone is having the same experience.

Encounter variety and its impact on healers (Source)

In general, we think it’s more important to the game to have diverse and interesting fights than it is to have 5 way ties for healing “usefulness” on every fight, just as we don’t go out of our way to have melee vs. ranged dps ties on every fight, or even an even number of fights.

We already place a lot of limits on our encounter designers as to whether what they want to do is fair to class balance, yet they still manage to come up with boss fights that none of us have ever seen before. Telling them they can no longer do raid-wide damage auras, or can only do them on 10% of bosses or whatever is just a restriction I don’t think the game design needs. You may feel better in the short term where you’re just as awesome on fight 2 as you are on fight 31, but in the long term you might lose interest in the raiding game when all the bosses start to feel the same.

Here is the most important part of my post: The community tendency is to push for homogeneity (in roles, in buffs, in healing and damage, in representation, in available enchants, in awesomeness of badge items, etc.) because “that’s fair.” We push for new, unpredictable and interesting things because it keeps players interested in the game.

What constitutes a support class? (Source)

In PvE there aren’t really support classes. You may adopt a support role in some encounters.

In PvP, some players call the support class the guy on a 3-player Arena team who isn’t doing the majority of the damage or the healing.

Any Arathi Basin improvements planned? (Source)

We don’t have any changes planned for Arathi Basin at this time. Cataclysm is still a ways off though so things could change. Just remember that not all Battlegrounds are meant to be a mirror, but if we feel there is an imbalance that is causing a problematic win-ratio, we will look into it.

PvP gearing focus is on crits (Source)

PvP excessively rewards focusing on crits because kills, not damage, are generally what win those fights for you. We think if resilience didn’t affect crits than those specs that focus on crits would have an extra advantage in PvP situations as well as the value of crit in general being more useful. Nobody is really preventing crits even with max resilience. Crits will still hit for more than hits even with max resilience. In fact, most of the complaints people have about dying too quickly come from the big crits they suffered.

—

Getting a crit is valuable for every damage spec and getting crits is more valuable in PvP than in PvE. Some talent trees have mechanics that benefit from getting crits, but the fact is that you still want crit and you still want to crit more in Arena. It doesn’t ever become a bad or problematic stat for you. Maybe your damage goes down a little, but I really don’t think the problems Fire and Balance have in Arenas is because of their lower crit chances. We could see perhaps in a Catclysm setting of allowing offensive “on crit” mechanics to work the same way defensive ones do today even if resilience changed that crit into a hit. It would be a good quality of life change, but I still think the impact this has in actual games is being overstated.

Druid

Does Moonkin Aura stack with Wrath of Air? (Source)

Currently, yes. The complexity here is we have a melee haste, a spell haste and a generic haste buff. One solution we’ve discussed is to consolidate buffs into melee or spell haste. Swift Retribution could be melee and Improved Moonkin Form could be spell. But I am just arm-waving at this point. We might go a different way with it.

Hunter

Future ammo changes (Source)

We haven’t announced the Cataclysm ammo change yet, except to say that it will no longer be a consumable.

The simplest solution is certainly that ammo goes away and guns, bows and crossbows just don’t ever run out of ammo. More complicated features might be more exciting as you say, but have potential downsides too. Applying fire to your arrows sounds cool, but is ultimately any more interesting than just having a “Fire Shot” ability. Do you really conceive of a lot of situations where you’d rather do Fire damage over physical damage? Having different kinds of arrows sounds interesting until you consider the delivery mechanism of having to “catch them all” through rare drops, badge vendors or the like. As you say, hunters do have a lot of buttons and a pet to manage, so I’m not sure they really need a whole additional mechanic to worry about.

Shaman

Do away with totems! (Source)

I don’t know of a kind way to say this, but if you hate totems, then you’re playing the wrong class. We are never, ever going to offer a shaman play style that involves ignoring or marginalizing totems. We have taken steps to improve those areas where totems fall behind, and any shaman that doesn’t see the massive quality of life improvement they got with the Totem Bar is just trying to downplay the positive in order to accentuate the negative.

If you consolidate haste into two types, what about Bloodlust / Heroism, etc.? (Source)

Bloodlust / Heroism we’re not just sure about yet. Only one class brings it, but there are three raid-viable specs in that class that all fill different roles, so it’s a big difference from an ability that say only an Arms warrior or Frost DK brings. We’ve considered the drum angle too, but we’re not 100% sold on that idea either. It is a very good buff, but overall players give it more credit for their success than it typically accounts for.

Totem of Wrath and Demonic Pact is something we’ve said before that we want to fix. They should be virtually the same buff (+spell power) and they definitely are not that now. It’s a big change though, because currently Elemental shaman don’t want to drop Totem of Wrath, unless they think that is the only thing getting them a raid slot, while on the other hand, Demo locks might very well vanish from raiding without their buff. None of this is ideal, but it’s also not a trivial fix or we would have done it long ago. Remember it gets even more complicated in the Cataclysm time frame because Intellect (and buffs that provide +Int) also provides spell power.

Warrior

Protection dps improvements (Source)

We’ll buff sustained damage in the same patch where we nerf Warbringer and the block conversion to Shield Slam. It probably won’t end up being a 2000 dps increase for anyone, but it should help close the gap.

Upcoming Shield Slam change (Source)

The diminishing returns are applied pre Shield Block. It’s the lesser of the two nerfs you mentioned. We picked a number that would only greatly affect tanks going out of their way to get really big Shield Slam crits, which is typically not the guy tanking Icecrown bosses.

ICC Hotfixes!

Quote from: Daelo (Source)

Just wanted to update players on the hotfixes that have been applied recently to Icecrown Citadel…

Blood Prince Council

- Prince Keleseth will no longer melee players. So if you get knocked into Keleseth or happen to move by him, he won’t swipe in between his casts and kill a non-tank.

- The first Shadow Resonance should appear earlier in the fight, which will allow the Keleseth tank to have more orbs on him or her if Keleseth is empowered second instead of third. We didn’t want which Blood Prince was empowered second to be a major element of the difficulty in the fight.

- We reduced the melee damage for the Princes by 10% for the 10 player difficulty. They were doing less damage than the 25 player before the hotfix, but this change lowers the damage further.

- Empowered Flames will now run out of power after shooting fewer firebolts in the 10 player difficulty. We did not change the initial impact damage.

Blood-Queen Lana’thel

- The Blood-Queen is no longer spawned until the Blood Princes dies. This will prevent any unfortunate entry of her highness while a raid is fighting the Blood Princes. The initial hotfix for this causes the Blood-Queen to not spawn at all in a particular circumstance, but this was also fixed last night.

- We increased the duration of Essence of the Blood Queen to 60 seconds in 25 player difficulty, and 75 seconds in 10 player difficulty. A strategy developed for managing the Essences throughout the fight that involved intentionally killing a player, and this change addresses that strategy. The new timing does interact with some of her other abilities in new ways, but there are methods that players have to lessen that impact.

Some New Hotfixes for Crimson Halls

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)

Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game. Keep in mind that some of these changes may not be active until after the realm has been restarted.

To review previous in-game fixes, please visit: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21723843880&sid=1

1/21

• Blood Queen Lana’thel will only be available after the Blood Prince Council is defeated.
• Blood Queen Lana’thel’s Essence has a longer duration.
• Kinetic Bombs no longer aggro Blood Queen Lana’thel during the Blood Princes encounter.
• Blood Queen Lanathel should no longer cast Vampiric Bite on pets.

Valnoth on the hotfixes (Source)

A hotfix was deployed earlier today that increased the duration of Essence of the Blood Queen from 60 seconds in 10 player mode to 75 seconds and (from) 50 seconds in 25 player mode to 60 seconds. While we hate to make hotfixes to limited attempt encounters in the middle of a play week, we felt it was necessary to correct an issue with the Blood Queen encounter which involved intentionally killing a member of the raid. I think it’s generally accepted that letting someone die should continue to remain a “bad thing.”

We also made a number of changes to 10 player Blood Prince Council which I’ll detail in the morning. We’ll be watching both fights closely in case any other issues arise.

Blue Posts

Skipping to the last boss in Heroics (Source)

While there may be some instances in which you can do this manually, our intention wasn’t to make this an exceedingly quick way to get two Emblems of Frost. This is more of a method to encourage players to participate in the Looking for Group system and help those who are playing through the dungeons get ready for the epic encounters that await them in our currently available raid content. Thus, implementing a “skip to the finale boss” mechanism would be counter to those goals.

Why Rated Battlegrounds can’t come “NOW!” (Source)

We have announced our plans to add a rating system to the Battlegrounds to bring back much better rewards and premade teams for Cataclysm. This is a system that has been under development for quite some time, and development will continue on it until we get it right. Adding this type of system into the game isn’t trivial. We want to make sure Battlegrounds provide new levels of competition, properly measure success, and adequately award players according to their performance.

We’ll be sharing more about this system as we get further along in development of the next expansion.

Ghostcrawler on Resilience changes (Source)

We don’t want resilience per se to bring with it the “kiss / curse” of also nerfing your own healing output or heals received. We want players to like resilience on PvP gear. It shouldn’t be a hard decision. We’d prefer a model where resilience improves your survivability without any real downside.

If we implement a healing change, it would be temporary because health pools will be larger in Cataclysm, proportionate to healing, so we don’t think that will be a problem. Burst damage may be less of a problem too for the same reason, but we’re less confident of that. If it isn’t a problem, then we can change the resilience scaling again.

—

It doesn’t surprise me that different players come to different conclusions that e.g. this is a big buff for melee or a big nerf for melee or that this means PvE gear will be more or less attractive. What surprises me is the strength everyone seems to have in their own convictions (“It will absolutely be this way…”), despite evidence that plenty of players don’t agree with them.

New Fan art
Three new pics were added to the Blizzard Fan art Section!

Blood Queen Lana’thel Full fight
I have embedded a video for the complete fight of Blood Queen Lana’thel. Riot Act of US-Anetheron has downed her! Also the video includes ventrilo chat so it’s quite a help for those of you trying to down her and for those who have yet to attempt her! Check the video below!