Archive for September, 2010

We take a break from our PTR coverage to discuss what’s going with Gavelier on Live.

I’m not going to open this post with the trite pirate speak, but it is Pirates Day in Azeroth. You can speak to any commoner to get a pirate costume for a short while or speak to Dread Captain DeMeza in Booty Bay to get a 12 hour costume. Make sure you visit DeMeza to get your holiday achievement.

You may notice that I’m going ‘sword and board’ in the above pic, rather then wielding my usual Tyrannical Beheader. That’s obviously because I’d been off playing in a PvP scenario. This time, it was my first excursion into Warsong Gulch. That’s a cozy little battleground, ain’t it? I took my Dread Corsair  buff to the battleground (after waiting 9 minutes!) and had a great round. Sure it was mostly because my team was awesome and the horde seemingly gave up towards the end of the match, but I still had a good round.

I also (because we blitzed the hell out of the place) got a couple of achievements: Warsong Expedience and Warsong Perfection. I say the horde gave up at the end because after pitched fighting around the middle of the zone on our first two flag captures, they were nowhere to be seen on our third run. We all just tailed the flag carrier into our base without seeing a single hordie.  I never died, which was weird. I got hit hard a few times, but never enough to drop me below 50% health. I credit our healers (a couple of paladins and a priest) and my stocking up on resilience with stuff like my PvP armor and the flask I quaffed. I did crap damage but was in the middle of everything for 19 honorable kills. I was using my Seal of Justice, so that may have contributed to my low damage output (that and I don’t have a decent one-hander) Aw well.

The new PTR patch is live on the PTR server now, and I’ve logged an hour or so on it to see what’s changed. For one, the new water art is there, and it’s a looker. Everyone was in consensus: it actually looks like water now. People were chiming in over local chat constantly to rave about the new water art. I guess it was a success, Blizzard.

Also up is reforging. In it, you can change a percentage of secondary stats on your gear (i.e. not strength, stamina or the like) to a new, more useful stat, like hit rating, crit, or haste. You can see here me reforging my Teldrassil Protector (my crummy prot-PvP axe) to have a higher crit rating in lieu of parry. I also reforged my leg armor to take advantage of the new Mastery stat. I really like this feature as it means that if you find gear that’s good but not quite what you need, you can tweak it to fit you better.

That’s all I’ve seen new so far in the ‘new, improved’ 4.0.1 PTR. I’ll come back and post more if the situation calls for it.

The new PTR patch is on the download now. I just wish I could tell you what was in it! The PTR downloader is showing everyone the beta patch notes which aren’t the same as the PTR patch notes.  I’ll try and get the real PTR notes for you when I can.

Blizzard has announced officially that Worgen will not get racial mounts, and instead will have Running Wild as their mount substitute. 

[bluepost] Running Wild is indeed the new racial "mount" for worgen. Functionally the ability works exactly like a mount. This does mean the worgen are not bringing faction mounts to the table which other Alliance races can access. This is also of course very different from the original Plainsrunning implemented for taurens. We have no plans to try and bring that ability back in any form.

Ultimately, we feel Running Wild fits very well with the nature of the worgen race. Rather than getting a physical mount, they get down and sprint on all fours. When you’re playing a worgen, it just feels awesome. 🙂 (source) [/bluepost]

This is fine, except that now Alliance players are short mounts for mount-based achievements, giving Horde players an advantage there. For example, Leading the Cavalry will be harder for Alliance players. We’ll see how this pans out.

According to Zarhym, it looks like there will be a huge new patch on the PTR in the near future. What will it contain? No one knows just yet.

[bluepost]We plan to apply a new build to the 4.0.1 public test realms soon. In order to accomplish our development goals while pushing this next patch, testers will be required to re-patch and re-download all of the PTR client data. This should happen automatically and you can verify this by checking the Launcher when it begins downloading new data. The progress bar should be empty and in the red (Setup) section. (source) [/bluepost]

I finally got a DPS meter onto the PTR to check Gav’s damage dealing capabilities, and the results were surprising. I had the exact same gear on both Gavs, and both had their main damage seals up (Seal of Command on live, Seal of Righteousness on the PTR) and Blessing of Kings on.  One difference is that on live BoK gives 10% stat boosts, but on PTR it’s 8%. Slight difference. The testing procedure was simply rampaging around the Cult of the Damned camp above the Argent Tournament grounds. Here’s what I found out.

It seems that the downtime on PTR spent waiting for holy power to gather so you can cast Templar’s Verdict or Divine Storm does hurt your DPS. You need to wait for Crusader’s Strike’s cooldown to end twice before you can get to your bread-and-butter attacks. Sure, you judge as well (which is helpful for ret pallys to close gaps), and ret pallys can occasionally mix in an exorcism but it still takes a while to gather full holy power, all the while the mob is pounding on you. You also need to judge when to use said holy power to heal. It’s an interesting dynamic, but it does hurt your DPS – but by how much?

Personally, in the above scenario, it hurt me to the tune of 8%. Eight percent less damage per second on the PTR. That hurts allot. I don’t know if other classes are suffering the same fate, but if they aren’t paladins are going to fall by the wayside as viable DPS.

I do want to point out that Blessing of Kings was buffing my strength and agility by 2% less the usual, so that accounts for some of it. Also, Seal of Righteousness just feels weaker then Seal of Command to me. It may just be me, but I’m worried. Despite any excuses, paladin DPS is down, and I don’t see an immediate cure.

Today I decided to test the new glyph mechanic on the PTR. First up Gav bought a new glyph (Templar’s Verdict) and some Vanishing Powder for erasing old glyphs. I opened the glyph screen as seen above.

Step one was erasing an old glyph. I no longer needed the Glyph of Consecration now that the changes to it’s cost have made it prohibitive for me to cast. So, I  shift-right clicked on the glyph.

Do I wish to erase it? Yes, yes I do. Of course, I can reapply it at any time in the future because it stays in my glyph spell book. Handy!

And there we go. A blank major glyph slot to put my Templar’s Verdict glyph into.

The system, as it stands, isn’t quite working. For example; I have the Glyph of Judgement as a major glyph from live, but here it’s  a prime glyph. I was able to leave my judgment glyph in it’s major slot and place a new one in a prime slot, effectively doubling it’s potency. This will obviously be fixed before the patch goes live, so I’m not too worried. This will make glyph management much easier in the future but I fear for those whose lively hood is based around glyph sales. Without the need to repurchase glyphs their sales will drop. Not that big a deal, I guess, but it’s something that’s I’ve thought about (mostly because of the money I – as a buyer – am  going to save in the deal). This seems to be a change for the better. Good going, Blizz!

This was supposed to be a post where I discussed the changes to druids in patch 4.0.1. I was supposed to discuss the changes to balance and the addition of the new solar/lunar power bar. I was going to talk about how I liked the change of bear form to cat at level 10. But it’s not going to be. Old grudges have resurfaced, and old wounds reopened. I’m going to vent instead.

I hate druids. I always have. Now, I even hate my own druid, Wrain. Wrain is my level 16 night elf balance druid who I popped onto the PTR to test low-level druidic play. I specced him balance and came to enjoy the spell that came with it, Starsurge. I didn’t really understand the solar/lunar power bar, and I still don’t. It’s not explained to a low-level druid what the changes do, so I kinda ignored it. I also played with cat form, and found it to be a better aid at my level then bear form.

Here’s where it all went to hell. After an hour or so rampaging through Darkshore I wanted to hearthstone home. But what’s this? No hearthstone?! WTF?? I checked everything in my little bags, and no hearthstone. Now that doesn’t make sense. Oh well, I thought; I’ll teleport to Moonglade and fly home. I was grumpy to find that the druid flight point wasn’t working (or missing, one of the two – I’m not sure where it’s supposed to be but there wasn’t one anywhere to be seen) so I had to hike it to the Alliance flight point just like Gav did back years ago. Once there I found that I didn’t have the money to fly home. Dammit! It’s just one thing after another!! Grumbling all the way back to town about having to run around for nothing, I played with my graphics settings, resetting my interface in the process. I don’t know whether it happened from that or during the loading screen, but I saw that my hearthstone had returned once I got to town and tried to sell things. What the hell?! Now thoroughly irritated, I hearthed back to Auberdine and logged off.

What is it with me and druids? Why do I always run into trouble with them and their stupid Moonglade?

I think druids hate me.

I popped Budman onto the PTR today, and you can see the results above. Budman specced as a Frost mage upon arriving, earning a Water Elemental in the process. They no longer have a time limit to them, and seem to have monster range on their Water Bolt. I started having RandomPetName (my Water Elemental’s actual name, and no I didn’t name him) pull while I moved and stood some 30 yards from him.  That allowed me space to work when I would eventually pull the mob off of him. It was an odd mechanic, but it worked.

Arcane Missiles were a fun and dynamic mechanic whereupon I would get the above eye catch to let me know I could cast the spell. When it proc’d I could then work the spell into my rotation.

Two changes I wasn’t so fond of were the increased level requirement for summoning refreshments. Level 38?! I never carried food or drinks with Budman and I was out in the field when it occurred to me that I didn’t have my food conjuring spells, leaving me with nothing to easily return my health. The second thing I wasn’t as happy with, also pertaining to increased level requirements, were the teleport spells. I was unable to teleport back to town because the spells – as I found out – required level 24 (and Budman’s level 22).  Dammit.

So the Mage changes are looking good, for leveling frost mages at least. I  can’t say for end-game or fire or arcane mages, so I’ll leave that to the dedicated mage blogs – I don’t want to step on any squishy toes with my heavy plate-wearing paladin’s boots.

I queued for a random heroic last night for the first time in I can’t tell you how long (wait a minute, yes I can – 16 days ago) and wound up in Hall of Stone. I dislike the Ulduar heroics for their difficulty. Aside from the Ice Crown Citadel heroics, they’re as hard as heroics come these days. In particular, I dislike the Tribunal of Ancients event in HoS. The mobs inevitably get loose from the tank in the chaos and attack me, attack the other DPS, attack the healer, and attack me (that’s worth mentioning twice). This time it was fairly straight forward, with us kicking the invaders asses left and right. Our party was doing massive damage (sorry, I didn’t have my DPS meter on so I don’t know exactly how much), but our resto druid was the big hero. Our timber-riffic healer kept everyone topped off with aplomb. After that, Sjonnir the Ironshaper was a breeze. No loot, but that’s no big deal. I got my gold and two frost emblems and that’s what I went for.