Build 12759 Achievements, WotLK in China, Blue Posts

Raids & Dungeons

• Glory of the Cataclysm Hero now rewards Reins of the Volcanic Stone Drake.
• Glory of the Cataclysm Raider (WIP) now rewards Reins of the UKNOWN Storm Drake

Guild Achievements

• We are Legendary now requires Warglaives of Azzinoth and Thori'dal, the Stars Fury.
• Working as a Team now works in-game.
• Guild Level 5 - Reach guild level 5.
• Guild Level 10 - Reach guild level 10.
• Guild Level 15 - Reach guild level 15.
• Guild Level 20 - Reach guild level 20.
• Guild Level 25 - Reach guild level 25.
• It All Adds Up - Spend at least 1,000,000 gold on guildmember repairs.
• Time To Open A Savings Account - Loot 1,000,0000 gold from creatures as a guild.
• Guild Vault (wip) - Purchased all 8 guild bank tabs.
• That's a Lot of Travel Time - Complete 50,000 quests as a guild.
• Guild Classic Dungeonmaster - Complete the classic dungeon achievements listed below in a guild group.
• Guild Deadmines - Complete the Deadmines in a guild group.

Professions

• Professional Illustrious Grand Master - Obtain 525 skill points in a profession.
• Working Around the Clock - Obtain 525 skill points in two professions.
• More Skills to Pay the Bills - Obtain 525 skill points in fishing, first aid, cooking and archaeology.
• Illustrious Grand Master Cook - Obtain 525 skill points in cooking.
• Illustrious Grand Master Fisherman - Obtain 525 skill points in fishing.
• Illustrious Grand Master in First Aid - Obtain 525 skill points in first aid.
• Expert in Archaeology - Obtain 225 skill points in archaeology.
• Artisan in Archaeology - Obtain 300 skill points in archaeology.
• Master in Archaeology - Obtain 375 skill points in archaeology.
• Grand Master in Archaeology - Obtain 450 skill points in archaeology.
• Illustrious Grand Master in Archaeology - Obtain 525 skill points in archaeology.

Quests

• Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms and Loremaster of Kalimdor no longer requires you to complete a given amount of quests anymore. You now have to complete the achievements for each zone to get the Loremaster title.
• All the WoW classic zones now have their own quests achievement: Arathi Highlands Quests, Badlands Quests, Blasted Lands Quests, Burning Steppes Quests, etc ... (Numbers are placeholders, obviously)

Beta - Recent Mount Hyjal Changes
In the last patch we made some major changes to the way that Hyjal flows.

The Good News: As you progress through the zone, you’ll no longer need to keep flying back and forth to the World Tree to notify Ysera of your progress.

The Bad News: Beta players who were halfway through the quest chain when the patch hit will not have received proper credit for earlier quests, and won’t be able to progress.

We’re sorry for the trouble but it’s all in the name of making a better game. (Source)

Northrend leveling way too hard on beta
Are we? Because I'm pretty sure nobody ever stated that as being the claim and I don't personally appreciate the comparison. Welcome to beta, where things you don't like happen with great frequency.

As has been stated in the main thread, combat numbers are continuing to be evaluated. Feedback on Outland and Northrend are actually very much appreciated as the new numbers do reflect on those areas as well. It is highly likely that we will be bumping up experience gains in Northrend to match the increase(s) we made in Outland when Northrend launched. (Source)

31 Points Talent
We want you to get your 31 point talent and most of the time that's what players want too. When they skip that talent they feel, as you seem to express, that something is wrong with the talent, not that there is a really fun choice in another tree. So once it's a given that we want you to spend 31 points in the main tree, then spending points in another tree as you level is just going to force you to eventually respec to get that 31st point anyway. (Technically, you don't need the bottom-most talent -- you just need 31. But we still consider it a problem when you don't want that bottom talent for some reason.) (Source)

Druid (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Furor
We have actually swapped Furor (now in Feral) and Heart of the Wild (now in Resto). (Source)

Restoration in raid
Your buttons: Rejuv, Regrowth, Lifebloom, Nourish, Healing Touch, Wild Growth.
Buttons you probably push in a raid: Rejuv, Wild Growth.*

Solution 1: We add Regorge and Rejuke as new heals. You push Rejuv and Wild Growth.
Solution 2: We get you to push Rejuv, Regrowth, Lifebloom, Nourish, Healing Touch and Wild Growth.

In Solution 1, you get new heals and still only use 2. In Solution 2 you use 6 heals. I suppose we could posit a Solution 3, where you get 2 new heals and use 8 buttons, but since we can't even get you to Solution 2 yet, that seems quite ambitious.

All of this belies the fact that there *are* new mechanics in your tree, even if there aren't new action buttons. Tree of Life and Efflorescence do things for which there is no current comparison.

* - every time I say this, druids will respond "Check my logs! I push all my buttons!" The sad truth is you likely don't need to. You can be a very good druid with those two buttons. (Source)

Restoration in Icecrown Citadel
We just don't think the data bear that out. I'm looking at a random parse for a heroic Icecrown 25 druid who healed 80% of his or her damage with Rejuv, 17.5% with Wild Growth and 2.3% with Swiftmend. That is literally 99% of healing, though I suppose you could be charitable and assume the Swiftmends did something with Regrowth. This result is very typical. Presumably this healer is no slouch, since he or she is handling the most challenging content in the game. You could argue I suppose that he or she would have been an even better healer with more buttons, but the fact is, the raid cleared the instance. This healer is not doing anything wrong. This healer figured out that ignoring those other buttons didn't really slow the group down much. We think that is a design flaw. If we saw, say the two-button druid healing Vault of Archavon and Marrowgar and the five-button druid healing heroic Sindragosa and Lich King, then it probably wouldn't be the kind of thing we were so aggro about. (Source)

But I don't like it when someone, especially as knowledgeable as Ghostcrawler, calls people bad for using a small number of abilities.
I think some of you misinterpreted what I was saying.

I said: We think druids are too effective when they only use a couple of spells. Several players called me on that saying they used all of their tools and only "bad druids" used two spells. I called them on that, saying that these so called "bad druids" were clearing every boss in the game, on heroic mode, using only two spells. So if they are truly the bad druids, there isn't enough separation between good and bad. More than likely, I think there aren't many bad druids beating LK 25 heroic, and that some druids are giving too much credit to the size of their toolbox when only a few tools are doing all the work.

It doesn't really matter though, because if you like using more tools, you should like Cataclysm healing. (Source)

Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Long Arm of the Law / Pursuit of Justice stacking
We generally don't stack movement speed increases and PoJ explicitly says that it doesn't stack, but the 30% is a very conservative number so we left ourselves room to bring that up. It's 45% in our current builds.

Even if they don't stack, I think PoJ will be useful in a variety of situations and won't feel like a wasted talent. (Source)

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Tier 1 Enhancement
Right. The problem with tier 1 Enhancement is you have Focused Strikes, which clearly is for Enhance and nobody else. Then you're left with Elemental Weapons, a good talent for all 3 specs, and Improved Shields, a good talent for Enhance and Resto. That leaves Elemental with only 3 points they want to spend in tier 1 and a strong desire to get to tier 2. But, as I said above, if Elemental did care about shields, then presumably they could care about Improved Shields. (Source)

Making Shaman fun
Fun is obviously very important to us, but it's also a really difficult thing to talk about. I read these forums constantly, and it's pretty typical to see the class who had exciting changes a few weeks ago now bored of those and eager for new changes. The grass is greener mindset is huge around here, perhaps understandably since it's hard to stay in touch with the changes going on for all classes at once. When you drill down sometimes on what players are looking for to make their class fun for them, you often get a list of ideas that would be terribly overpowered or just not work in our game, or both. That doesn't mean it's not a goal. It just means that delivering what is fun for one player means something very different than what is fun for another player. (Source)

Fire Nova
We'd like to downplay Fire Nova in lieu of Earthquake (in addition to Chain Lightning of course). We also agree that Fire Nova should be used for true AE situations and not against single targets. (Source)

Elemental Rotation
We didn't set out with the goal of change for the sake of change though. Most of the new rotational abilities we've added were to fix problems with the class. Prot warriors for example are going to be hitting the same buttons they hit in LK because we think that works. Elemental is getting Unleashed Weapon (and Earthquake), and beyond that we think you have the right number of buttons to hit, so we're hesitant to cram a new button in there. Nor are we excited about giving you "Super Duper Lightning Bolt" that lets you take Lightning Bolt off your bar just for the sake of having a new button. I'd characterize the Elemental playstyle as closer to a mage, who isn't managing a ton of different nukes, but does have to react to what is happening in terms of procs, short cooldowns and movement. Lava Surge, Elemental Mastery and Unleashed Weapon are examples of those respectively.

We'll definitely take the feedback under advisement though. (Source)

Feral Spirit Scaling
Feral Spirit should scale like all pets. (It doesn't yet). Losing Parry was a consequence of losing Spirit Weapons, but we'll give it back somewhere. (Source)

Thunderstorm
I agree that Enhancement's choice at level 10 is transformative. I disagree that Resto similarly plays very differently at level 10. I also think you're downplaying Thunderstorm. Now you can Lightning Bolt and when a target gets closer to you, Thunderstorm them back and then Lightning Bolt them again. (Source)

Unleash Weapon
Elemental's range talent needs to affect Unleash Weapon too. (Source)

The realms listed below will be undergoing a 24-hour extended maintenance to prepare them for the upcoming expansion. Maintenance will begin at 12:01 AM PDT on Tuesday, August 17, and will conclude at approximately 12:01 AM PDT on Wednesday, August 18.

All realms not listed below will undergo standard scheduled maintenance beginning on Tuesday, August 17, at 5:00 AM PDT and will be back up at approximately 11:00 AM PDT. During this time, all realms and many web services will be unavailable.

Antonidas, Anub'arak, Blackwater Raiders, Bladefist, Borean Tundra, Cairne, Cenarion Circle, Cenarius, Darrowmere, Drak'Tharon, Drenden, Echo Isles, Farstriders, Fenris, Garrosh, Hydraxis, Hyjal, Korialstrasz, Lightbringer, Maiev, Misha, Mok'Nathal, Moon Guard, Nazgrel, Nordrassil, Quel'dorei, Ravenholdt, Rivendare, Shandris, Shu'halo, Sisters of Elune, The Forgotten Coast, Tortheldrin, Uther, Vashj, Winterhoof, Wyrmrest Accord