Category: mmo-champion

As we prepare for the public testing phase of minor content patch 3.3.3, some players might come across information regarding upcoming content that isn't yet available. To avoid any confusion, we'd like to tell you about an exciting new raid dungeon we are working on for content patch 3.3.5.

The Ruby Sanctum

A powerful war party of the Black Dragonflight, led by the fearsome Twilight dragon, Halion, have launched an assault upon the Ruby Sanctum beneath Wyrmrest Temple. By destroying the sanctum, the Black Dragonflight look to crush those that would stand in the way of their master’s reemergence into Azeroth and to ultimately shatter the Wyrmrest Accord – the sacred bond that unites the dragonflights.

The battle that is to come will surely deal a crippling blow to the Red Dragonflight, however, it is up to you to stop this unprecedented offensive and defend the Ruby Sanctum. First you must face the assault of Halion's servants, Saviana Ragefire, Baltharus the Warborn, and General Zarithrian, before squaring off against Halion the Twilight Destroyer, a new and deadly force in this realm.

The Ruby Sanctum will feature 10- and 25-player content, Heroic difficulties and all-new rewards! Stay tuned for more information as we get closer to its release.

• Number 2. The lieutenants are sub-bosses which will each drop an Emblem of Frost. Halion is the main boss. While the activation of Heroic difficulty is different from the Obsidian Sanctum, the overall raid format for the Ruby Sanctum is very comparable.
• You're likely to find some random pieces of armor on par with Lich King loot, similar to the items Onyxia dropped while Trial of the Crusader was the top-tier raid. You can also expect to see some more trinkets and things of that nature.
• This raid will not only provide a bit of additional content to pair with the current content of patch 3.3, it will be the beginning of an advancement in the storyline for Cataclysm.
• The plan is to have a normal mode and a heroic mode just like Icecrown Citadel, so far there is no plan for a Sartharion +1/+2/+3-like encounter.

US Testing Schedule:
Date to be determined

EU Testing Schedule:
Tuesday, May 18 starting at 19:30 CEST.

Get those opt-ins ready for the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm closed beta! The sundering of Azeroth is nigh, and you don’t want to be left out in the cold of Northrend when you could be enjoying the sun-drenched beaches on the goblin isle of Kezan. To ensure you’re opted-in and eligible as a potential candidate, you’ll need a World of Warcraft license attached to your Battle.net account, have your current system specifications uploaded to the Battle.net Beta Profile Settings page, and have expressed interest through the franchise-specific check boxes.

So get your opt-ins set up, updated, and ready; we're worgen real hard to get the beta going soon!

Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator)
DK Rotations in Cataclysm (Source)
The point is not that we want a DK to hit a yellow attack then sit around waiting until they can do something fun again.

The point is that we have no room to add anything to the DK rotation. If we wanted to add "clearcasting" style procs or cooldowns finishing sooner or runes regenerating sooner, we can't really do that because the DK doesn't have room in a very tight rotation to use those abilities. If you try and use your GCD on anything else, then the whole rotation collapses because then your runes aren't coming back at the right time or your diseases are expiring or whatever.

Imagine 1-4 are rotational abilities like Icy Touch and Blood Strike and F = "fun thing".

DK rotation today: 1233331233334123333123333
DK rotation in Cataclysm: 123333-F-12-F-33334123333-F-

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=24038608865&sid=1

5/12

• Byran Landers in Dalaran is no longer continuously repeating his greeting emote.

While the Cataclysm updates to many of the professions are still deep in development, we wanted to share some of the work that's been going on, as well as a high-level look at any lessons learned or changes to their underlying philosophies during the design process. Please be aware that not all professions have the same extent of information available right now, but each is receiving the same love and attention as the next.

Take heed of these teasers as you look forward to your new rank of Illustrious Grand Master!

Please enjoy!

General

• Perks will continue to exist across all professions, and will upgraded appropriately.

Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Tailoring

• Many of the green (and possibly some blue) items made during the process of leveling these professions will contain random stats. In most examples, two stats on these items will be set, and two will be random. The idea with these items is to mix up the skill leveling items so you're not just, for example, creating 10 pairs of boots that are all exactly the same.
• Superior-quality items that require more materials than other recipes in the same skill range provide multiple skill-ups. For example, if a recipe takes three times the reagents, it will give you three skill-ups.
• We didn't feel like we were getting much flexibility from specializations, so they have been removed for all three of these professions. The intent was to help people diversify their profession to feel different from that of other players, but through other professions we've found systems that work better to this end, such as simply making recipes available that you can earn over time.
• To follow up the previous change, all items that required a specialization are now useable by anyone.
• Tailoring the high-end Cataclysm items will center around a single cloth type that can be crafted through five different recipes — each with their own material components and a long cooldown.
• All three professions will create their starter sets of PVP gear, which will be upgraded with new recipes every season. In general, these are meant to keep pace as an entry-level PvP set below whatever the current Hero Point set is.

Alchemy

• New elixirs will be about 75% as strong as flasks. So you can get more total stat points with two elixirs, but flasks will still be the best at giving you a single offensive or defensive stat.
• New unique material used by nearly all high-level recipes will be created by alchemists on a one-day cooldown.
• New Mysterious Potion created with common materials restores health and mana in a massively random range, as well as sometimes granting the benefit of another potion. The health and mana range is from 1-20,000 and is able to crit. The minimum amount restored, however, is scaled upwards by the Alchemy skill, making it a great choice for alchemists to keep for themselves.
• All potions and elixirs now use the same basic vial type. Flasks still use a fancy vial.
• New Alchemist Stone.

Enchanting
In general, material component costs for most recipes are more moderate in how much they require, while the highest-end recipes will still require large quantities. The goal of this change is to make the leveling recipes more consistent and not create unintended roadblocks in getting to the higher skill levels.
An enchanter vanity pet is being added.

New Cataclysm weapon enchantment preview:

• Avalanche — Chance to deal Nature damage on melee hit/spell hit.
• Elemental Slayer — As expected, this enchantment helps players deal devastating damage to elemental creatures.
• Hurricane — A stacking haste proc.
• Heartsong — Mana regeneration through increased Spirit when chain-casting spells.
• Many more maximum-level enchantments are still in progress.

Engineering

• Engineering is still being designed, but expect new unpredictable gadgets to use on yourself or enemies. Toys, explosives, and even a new vanity pet or two. Oh, and powerful mechanical bows and crossbows in addition to guns.
• In general, we want Engineering to remain a tradeskill mainly focused on creating fun or useful gadgets for the engineer, but we are exploring options for items that can be sold to other players for profit.

Inscription

• With the large number of class changes coming with Cataclysm, many existing glyphs will see new functionality.
• Minor glyphs are woefully uneven from one class to the next right now, so they're a focus for us to clean them up and try to ensure that everyone has minor glyphs they're excited about.
• New Darkmoon Cards will be added, with hopes they'll all be as awesome as the Greatness card.
• We'll be adding more major glyphs as well, but in the hopes of making them as balanced as possible, we'll likely wait until after the expansion ships to add any for the new abilities in Cataclysm.
• New and more desirable off-hand and relic recipes will be added.

Jewelcrafting

• Some gem colors have changed! Hit is now blue. Mastery and Dodge are yellow. Intellect is now red. These simple changes have created a much more diverse matrix of gem cuts.
• New Jewelcrafting dailies will be introduced.
• Many cuts are being added to support the new Mastery stat.
• Some new Cataclysm jewelry recipes have completely random properties, and can sometimes create superior and epic versions.
• Jewelcrafters will have some fun new (and potentially lucrative) vanity items, including fist weapons, rhinestone sunglasses, monocles, and stardust (sprinkle on players for entertainment).

Herbalism, Skinning, and Mining

• All Cataclysm herbs have the chance of containing Volatile Life.
• There won't be a new Lotus equivalent in Cataclysm. Alchemists will use the more reliably-found Volatile Life to create the new high level flasks.

Herb Example:

• "Heartblossom — Named for its deep red color, this delicate flower grows close to the ground, and always in pairs. If one blossom is taken, the other flower begins to wilt immediately and dies soon after. It is considered very unlucky to disturb a Heartblossom without blessing it first."
• Savage Leather, the basic Cataclysm leather, can be gathered from most creatures found in the expansion areas and can be converted to Heavy Savage Leather at a 6:1 rate.
• Pristine Hide, the rare Cataclysm hide, can be found when skinning creatures in the expansion areas, or be converted from Heavy Savage Leather.
• Obsidian is the new common mineral found when mining in Cataclysm, and can contain gems, Volatile Fire, and Volatile Shadow.
• Elementium is the new uncommon mineral found when mining in Cataclysm, and can contain gems, Volatile Fire, Volatile Water, or Volatile Earth.
• Pyrite is the new rare mineral found when mining in Cataclysm, and can contain gems and Volatile Fire.
• Previous Elementium Ore and Bar used for classic quests will be renamed to Elementium Ingot and Hardened Elementium Bar.
• We like the gathering perks as they are; not a game-changing bonus but something themed and fun. But as all tradeskills are in the design stages these are still being discussed to a degree.

Cooking

• Cooking is still in the early stages, but we plan on continuing with daily quests, feasts, and some fun new recipes.
• We liked the cooking dailies that had players picking up items that spawned in the world near the quest giver, so most if not all new cooking dailies will work similarly.

First Aid

• Bandages will have a short cast time and put a heal over time effect on the target for 8 seconds. This effect is broken by damage.
• Three new bandages! That's right: THREE!

Bandage preview:

• "Dense Embersilk Bandage" Heals for 34,800 over 8 seconds. Requires 3 Embersilk to create.

Fishing

• Lots of new fish and other fun items to catch! Fish are still used to make premium food.
• New fishing dailies.

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=24038608865&sid=1

5/11

• The amount of health has been increased on demolishers in the Strand of the Ancients battleground.

Now that the 3.3.5 patch is available for PTR testing, we wanted to have a round of focus testing for Ruby Sanctum this Thursday, May 13. Only normal mode will be available, with Heroic testing to occur at a later date.

Everything related to this zone is implemented for this test, please note any issues with the trash creatures and sub-bosses, loot, achievements, and quests.

US Testing Schedule: Thursday, May 13 starting at 19:00 EDT.

EU Testing Schedule: Thursday, May 13 starting at 19:30 CEST.

We plan to allow testing for an extended period on Thursday. However since this is the Test Realm, unforeseen issues could delay or cancel testing at any time.

The second issue of the World of Warcraft Official Magazine is winging its way to subscribers' mailboxes now. It features a spectacular high-quality, double-foldout cover depicting Deathwing in battle with Alexstrasza.

Inside you'll find a guide to Azeroth’s dragons, a look at the lore of the titans, an interview with the development team behind the game's quests, expert advice from top raiding guilds and PvPers, and much more.

For a sneak preview of some of this issue's articles and info on how to subscribe, head over to- http://www.worldofwarcraftthemagazine.com

Adding a friend through Real ID
To add a Real ID friend to your friends list, one of you will need to know the others email address. When you add someone as a Real ID friend, a request will be sent to the person you invite and they'll need to accept the request before you can see their information (character, server, etc.) in your friends list.

Your email address is not displayed in the friends list, and not visible to friends of people you are Real ID friends with.

Crowd Control in Cataclysm
Not every pull is going to require crowd control, but there will be pulls that require crowd control, which isn't really the case today. Once you overgear content you overgear it, and you can take shortcuts.

We're going to make sure warriors have reasonable crowd control. Redesigning Intimidating Shout is a likely candidate. Death knights may need something more reliable depending on how they shake out with the resource changes. We're making some other adjustments here and there, but for the most part every other class has something they can do. (Source)

[…] There are exceptions of course and it depends a lot on your group composition and the skill of your players, but generally we assume that CC is something for which the dps players in the group are responsible.

Under that model, Mind Control works fine for priest crowd control since the healers have plenty to do already. Mind Control won't work on every type of target, but many types of crowd control have a target type limitation. We think having to approach a pull differently depending on your comp is one of those things that makes classes feel distinct from each other. It's hard to put together a 5-player dungeon group or a 10-player raid in Cataclysm that is totally helpless with regard to crowd control. If you don't like approaching encounters as puzzles to be solved, and / or really aren't interested in dungeons being challenging, then stick with normal dungeons or wait until you outgear the heroics. (Source)

Mob positioning bug
It was pretty bad in 3.3, but then we fixed some things in 3.3.3 to get it back to how it felt earlier. In general, if you don't move at all, then a mob targeting you shouldn't move either. The only exceptions would be if they were trying to coordinate with their own allies in some specialized cases. But if you move, even if you rotate or shift just a little, then the mob is going to try to get back into position as well.

There's some interesting speculation above for reasons I am perceived to have given for why the situation exists. The actual reason it exists is that if mobs did not quickly reposition, you could get them into a mode where they couldn't hit you because they would always moving back into position to hit you. They would be doing too much adjusting and not enough hitting. (I'm simplifying a lot, so suggestions like "Why can't they just move and swing at the same time?" aren't super helpful.) We don't want tanks to feel like what they're supposed to do is shift around constantly to minimize taking damage. It's a fine line between mob movement feeling correct and minimizing potential exploits. (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Death Knight changes in Cataclysm
For every player who liked the fast pace of having to hit a button every GCD, there were plenty of others who found it tedious, repetitive and exhausting. I'm just asking you to be realistic about the accuracy of posts you read that say "Nobody was asking for this" or "This is not what we want."

The main goal of the resource change is to buy DKs some free GCDs. Currently some abilities just can't compete, even if free, because you don't have the GCD to use that button. However, it's also not the goal that DKs stand around doing nothing for long stretches because all their runes are used up and everything else is on cooldown. Being GCD locked isn't a fun place to be, for any class. You can't vary your actions at all — in fact you are often such a slave to those actions that you have tunnel vision for your UI (even if modded) and can't react to the dynamic nature of most encounters these days. If anything messes up your rotation, say you have to move or are temporarily CC'd, then everything just falls apart.

We don't get every change in place before making an alpha or beta build. It's much like the way large patches roll out but to an even greater degree — you'll see some changes, then some more, until the rate of change ultimately slows down right before ship. There are very few Cataclysm mechanics, and no classes, that we think are "done" yet. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Heroic Strike
The design intent for Heroic Strike has pretty much always been that you use it to bleed off excess rage and convert that into damage. We haven’t been happy for some time that warriors can hit a near-infinite rage plateau, but we knew changi…