Archive for the 'Patches' Category

Old news!

June 17, 2008
5 Comments

An unfortunate side-effect of being strapped down in bed with a very bad flu, besides of course an unhygienic amount of snot and sneezing, is that one tends to miss out on stuff. Well, I got one such Very Bad Flu last weekend, and, as I would find out - I missed quite a scoop.

I’m still going to write about it, but blogging about news that is a couple of days old is the internet equivalent of wishing your colleagues a Happy New Year in the middle of June; some people might appreciate the gesture but most will probably just look at you funny.

You may now proceed to look at me funny.

So. What is the news? The news is that the new shaman talents and abilities have leaked out from the WotLK Alpha. And yeah, that’s pretty big. It’s quite a list, too, so grab yourself something to drink.

Also - disclaimer alert! - remember that all of the information that has leaked out so far is still speculative and very much subject to change; Blizzard don’t call it Alpha for nothing.

Continue reading ‘Old news!’

PTR madness

February 11, 2008
1 Comment

There’s not going to be much news in this post. After all, the 2.4 novelties have already found their way to the various WoW news sites. Instead, here is a report on the absurdity that inevitably happens every time the PTR opens its doors…

Few people have succeeded in copying their characters to the PTR. All the other poor slobs, such as myself, had no choice but to roll a new character. Which we did, en masse.

There was a lot of confusion over the new Sunwell island, Quel’Danas. More specifically: how to reach it. No ferry, no zeppelin, no portal…

…so we swam. Like lemmings.

Surprisingly, with some creative usage of corpse running and healing through the swimming fatigue, the island can indeed be reached this way. Absurd? You bet.

What do you get when you combine an island full of level ?? mobs with a crapload of level 1 blood elves? A total massacre, that’s what.

The portal to the new 25-man raid.

And the portal to the new 5-man instance. Both of these were obviously completely off-limits for my poor level one self.

New Shaman gear! Three pieces (gloves, kilt and helmet) are restoration, two (shoulders, chest) are elemental.

So yeah, lots of amusing sights, but not so much news. I think I’ll just wait until the patch goes live.

2.4 is coming to town

February 10, 2008
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Good old StormstrikePatch 2.4 is coming live to a PTR near you, and it brings exciting changes such as:

  • Female Draenei can no longer become stuck under a root in the tunnels leading to Blackfathom Deeps, Ashenvale.
  • Saber/Tiger Mounts will now make footprints when walking backwards in snow.

Thank god, I’m not sure how we ever managed without the footprints! But the ones that I’m truly interested in are of course the…

Shaman changes

  • Call of Thunder: (Rank 5) now gives 5% critical strike chance.

Down from 6%. This was just a matter of time I guess.

  • Earth Shield: Mana cost reduced roughly in half, and charges reduced from 10 to 6.

Apparently they didn’t add a cooldown after all. Good news!

  • Elemental Focus: This buff will no longer be removed when Shamanistic Focus is triggered.

Bug fix. Nice for the PvPers.

  • Healing Grace: This talent now reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.The resistance to being dispelled modifier from this talent now applies correctly to Water Breathing.

More PvP changes. Is this an attempt to make restoration better in arenas?

  • Rockbiter Weapon: Tooltip and error messages have been adjusted slightly.

Okay.

  • Stormstrike has a new icon.

Uhm. Okay.

  • Totem timer icons will now show up under your player portrait when you cast totem spells. Right-clicking a totem timer icon will destroy that totem.

Now here we get to the interesting part: in-game totem timers! I never thought I’d see the day. Being able to remove one totem instead of all four at once is awesome, I’m curious to see how this is going to work out.

  • The Shaman spell Fire Nova Totem will no longer sometime detonate without doing any damage.

I can’t say that’s ever happened to me, but yay, bug fix.

Other changes

  • The Sunwell Isle is now available for play. This area includes a new quest hub and 5-player and 25-player instances. Join the Shattered Sun Offensive in shutting down Kael’thas’ nefarious operations. This new force is comprised by both the Aldor and Scryers and is led by the Naaru. Players will take part in claiming Sun’s Reach and setting up a larger base of operation to stop Kael’thas and the Legion.

I don’t know about you, but I’m excited. I know I’m never going to see the 25-man raid on the inside, but a new 5-man instance? Hurray!

  • Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers.

No more retraining Earth Shield!

  • New Fishing Daily Quests! Visit the mysterious old man fishing at Silmyr Lake outside of Shattrath City to discover what treasures he has to offer.

I’m adding this one because I’m a fishing fanatic, and because this news makes me a happy little Nat Pagle indeed. I’m curious about these daily quests.

Read the full list of patch notes at MMO-champion: http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=4163.0

Earth Shield woes

December 14, 2007
0 Comments

Earth Shield woes This was one of the shaman changes in patch 2.3:

Earth Shield: This ability will no longer be overwritten when the new Earth Shield would do less healing.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Except that it doesn’t work. No matter how many charges are left, I can’t overwrite an existing Earth Shield with a new one. What makes it even more annoying is that it completely disregards trinket use, so I can no longer overwrite a non-trinketed Earth Shield with a much, much more powerful one.

Temporary fix: ask your tank to manually remove his Earth Shield. Not the most elegant solution, but it works.

But what if you discover too late and you’ve already popped your trinkets? Temporary fix #2: cast Earth Shield (rank 1) on yourself, making it disappear from the tank. Then cast it on the tank again. 600 mana down the drain, but at least you didn’t waste your healing bonus.

But it gets worse. For patch 2.3.2, Blizzard had planned to reduce the mana cost for Earth Shield but add a 30-second cooldown. PvP-flagged shamans worldwide protested loudly, and rightly so. A buff that’s so easily dispelled shouldn’t come with such a long cooldown. Thankfully, this change has been removed from the patch, but only until the developers have looked into the dispellability of Earth Shield. (Yes, dispellability. That’s a perfectly fine word and you know it.)

I don’t PvP much, so I can only hope they will look into the buggy “A more powerful spell is already active” error as well. Combining a cooldown with the inability to overwrite an Earth Shield will make me a sad panda indeed.

Shocking

October 12, 2007
2 Comments

Now that I’m on the subject of shocks anyway… this is from the PTR 2.3 patch notes.

Frost Shock is no longer subject to diminishing returns.

It embarrasses me to admit it but I had no idea what they meant. Luckily, there’s always WoWWiki to help us out.

[Frost Shock] is affected by diminishing returns, the first snare lasts 8 sec, on second cast 4 sec, third 2 sec then the target is immune to it for 15 seconds after expiration of the last snare.

Honestly, I had no idea. I learn something new every day.

As I understand it, removing the diminishing returns means that (in theory at least) we can kite enemies ad infinitum, until they die or until we’re out of mana.

This of course raises a question: how does Frost Shock compare to the snare abilities of other classes?

  • instant cast
  • range of 20 yards
  • lasts for 8 seconds
  • cooldown of 6 seconds
  • can be active on multiple targets at the time
  • no specific talent build required

No matter how I look at it… after patch 2.3 Frost Shock will be, hands down, the best snare ability in the game. Is this maybe Blizzard’s response to all the shamans that were begging for crowd control?

In high spirits

September 27, 2007
0 Comments

Patch 2.2 has been released, and my UI remains curiously unbroken - I had to update Clique but that was about it. The patch itself wasn’t too interesting, the biggest change for shaman being the improved “Focused Mind” talent. Good news if you’re into PvP I suppose, but it’s still nothing ground-breaking for PvE.

But hey, at least us non-druids can loop in mid-air again.

I’m very curious about the upcoming patch however. Druids, priests and mages will have their respective talents improved that allow for extra mana regeneration while casting, from 15% to 30%. With this, the new mana regeneration rates while casting become 0.18 MP/5 per point of spirit for priests and mages, 0.16 MP/5 for druids in caster form and 0.15 MP/5 for druids in non-caster form.

Shaman have no such talent. We do however have a mana spring totem, which fittingly also receives an upgrade. The rank 5 version of this totem now restores 12 mana every 2 seconds, equivalent to 30 MP/5. After the upgrade it will restore 20 mana every 2 seconds, which means 50 MP/5. An upgrade of 67%!

However, even the improved mana spring totem doesn’t hold a candle to the mana regeneration talents of the other classes. Simply put, priests and mages need at least 265 points in spirit to top our little totem (that’s 50/0.18 - 12.5, which is the standard spirit bonus), caster form druids 297 points (50/0.16 - 15), and non-caster form druids 318 points (50/0.15 - 15). These numbers are easy to achieve, especially for cloth-wearers.

So does this mean shaman will get the short end of the stick? (Yes, yes, pun not intended.) Not really. For starters, the mana tide totem is something every shaman has, regardless of specialisation, and as such we don’t have to shove any talent points towards it. But the biggest benefit comes from the nature of our totems; they’re good when we’re on our own but it’s in groups where they really shine. Planting a mana tide totem will mean an extra 50 MP/5 for every mana-using class in your party. Yes, now we’re talking.

Blizzard has already announced they want to make spirit a more attractive attribute, and with the upcoming patch this seems to ring true, at least where priests, mages and druids are concerned. Spirit has always been a useless attribute for mail-wearing classes however, and I’m happy to see this remains unchanged. Hunters have already had their aspect of the viper changed (a large improvement from what I understood), and with the mana totem upgrade I’m as happy a shammy as can be. At least I know I can happily continue to stuff my gear full of Royal Nightseyes.