The Vortex Pinnacle - Skywall 5-Man Video
TotalBiscuit released a long (28 minutes) video of the new Vortex Pinnacle 5-man instance located in Uldum/Skywall.



Cataclysm Pets - Armadillo and Seagull
2 Companion pets have been added to the game in the latest beta build, the Rutsberg Seagull and the Armadillo. The texture on the armadillo seems to be a little low res but keep in mind that the pet is fairly small.

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Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

LVL 85 Dungeons too hard?
It's not quite that extreme. The problem currently is that some players are tackling Uldum or Twilight Highlands in level 83 gear, or worse, their LK epics (just had to throw that in there ). You will probably want a good mix of level 84 and 85 gear before doing the level 85 dungeons, and certainly the heroics. Eloderung says that he or she now has a decent mix of dungeon gear so the quest gear issue should be skewing things less. There are still overtuned or undertuned bosses and abilities for us to contend with though. (Source)

6% vs. 10% spellpower in Cataclysm
The 10% spell power isn't offered by a ton of specs (nor are there any other specs that we want to add it to), but the buff makes a really big difference to casters. The 6% buff is there so we could make sure you weren't totally without any kind of buff if you lacked one of the 10% guys. (Source)

Mastery Stat
Well, they are shiny and new and pretty much give you exactly what you want, so that response isn't too surprising. It's good that mastery is attractive and fun. We just don't want non-mastery gear to be viewed as junk the way some classes view some stats on Live. (Source)

Spamming the same spell
Right. It's a skill curve thing. If there is a right time to use something and a big penalty for doing something at the wrong time, then there is a bigger difference between good and less good players. If you can pretty much do something whenever, then there is less to learn about your class, less to perfect and ultimately less reward in investing in understanding the character. (Source)

Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Holy Light / Flash of Light spamming
We just don't agree that it worked. What generally happened was either the set bonuses, glyphs and librams all aligned to make either Flash of Light the best spell or Holy Light. In rare cases we got lucky and paladins could choose to gear either for a FoL or HL spam, but they were still choosing one spell over the other. They really weren't using a particular spell for a particular job, so the toolbox felt small and they were hitting the same buttons all the time.

I can almost promise you that a Holy paladin in Cataclysm will use Holy Shock, Word of Glory, Flash of Light, Holy Light, Divine Light, Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn on every challenging dungeon or raid run. That sounds a lot more fun than spamming Holy Light with the occasional Holy Shock on cooldown. (Source)

Mana costs
Mana needs to matter more. Ret (and Prot) generally need to be able to hit all of "their" buttons without being resource constrained, but then should only have enough mana to situationally use things like Holy Light, Exorcism or (untalented) Consecrate.

It's fine to cast one Exorcism at range to pull or something, but it's not something we generally want you doing outside of Art of War procs. We're pretty reluctant to put a cooldown back on the spell though. (Source)

AE Healing
We just don't believe the healing situation and the AE healing situation in particular is as dire as many of you are suggesting. We balance the encounters around the class capabilities, so if many groups are struggling on certain ones, those will be adjusted accordingly. We generally don't give classes new abilities because they have trouble on certain fights. If you're finding that you are just constantly behind the curve on every encounter, even the trash, then you are probably doing something wrong (attempting these dungeons undergeared is something we are seeing a lot) or your class has some kind of systemic bug that is affecting all of the healing you do.

Overall, the dungeons probably will end up more challenging than they were in Lich King. Even if we eventually end up with 10 minute chain pulling 5-player dungeons in Deathwing gear, there is no need to start out that way. (Source)

Holy Mastery
Incidentally, we looked at mastery for Holy paladins today and decided we were happy, for now, with the power it offers, so reforge away if you think that makes you more powerful. We might always tweak things in the future. (Source)

Changing Light of Dawn to only use Holy Power
We thought about a similar implementation a lot, but just worried that would make Light of Dawn harder to use. With a long cooldown, you at least can save it until you think you need it. Sitting on 3 Holy Power (and being unable to use Word of Glory during that time) might be brutal. (Source)

Haste/Crit/Overhealing in Cataclysm
That's an interesting perspective. Typically LK paladins tell us that they like haste because it lets them get a heal out *right now* before a tank dies, but don't like crit because it often overheals. To use a tired cliche, it did feel a lot like Whack-a-mole because you needed to heal ASAP but how hard you healed someone wasn't nearly as important. FoL could often bring someone to full and a HL crit would be tons of overhealing. (I am talking only about the stats in how they affect healing per se, not extra effects like Illumination.) In Cataclysm you won't overheal as much (making the free healing from crits more useful) but you won't be in constant fear of the tank dying in one GCD (making haste less useful). (Source)

Warrior (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Secondary effect on Heroic Leap
Adding a secondary effect to Heroic Leap, like a Thunder Clap or letting you get out of roots might be a good role for a glyph. We don't like to glyph new high level abilities immediately because then players don't appreciate what the glyph does for them, since they have never used the ability unglyphed. It's something we could consider for a future patch. (Source)
This article was originally published in forum thread: Vortex Pinnacle Video, Companion Pets, Blue Posts, started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 113 Comments
  1. Ikkatsu's Avatar
    I need that Armadillo.

    More Paladin spam and no Death Knight news, again.

    I think im going to have to realise they don't give a fuck and reroll.
  1. Garots's Avatar
    it's a friggin seagull!
  1. Fraza's Avatar
    More Paladin stuff, moar!
  1. mmoc34c31092a9's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Ikkatsu View Post
    I need that Armadillo.

    More Paladin spam and no Death Knight news, again.

    I think im going to have to realise they don't give a fuck and reroll.
    They'll get there some point this century, we'll have 4 weeks (or so) once Beta is over to level up before Release if they don't anyway.
  1. kyoharu's Avatar
    So people are complaining things are too hard? Well I'm not on Beta myself so I can't really say anything with any certainty, but it sounds to me like they're making these dungeons the way the used to be. In WOLK, people breeze through, one wipe and they bolt. In Vanilla and some cases BC (Heroic Shadowlabs), dungeons were expected to be hard. CC had to be used, and people had to be smart and be responsible for themselves (watching aggro, bandaging, etc. Remember bandaging? Good times.) In short, I hope that these dungeons remain a good challenge.
  1. Sollace's Avatar
    Must..have...seagull pet
  1. Alraml's Avatar
    We should all just reroll to paladins. Clearly they're the only class in this game
  1. Vehemence's Avatar
    So much Paladin posts, how many posts did Rogues got in total? or any hint for suggestions? Any attention? or are they just making subtlety just like the feral tree without consulting the beta testers?
  1. caervek's Avatar
    Yay we can now get a flying rat pet lol, It would be funny if they died when you go into a city (they are culled in real life because their classed as vermin)
  1. Cernunnos's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by kyoharu View Post
    So people are complaining things are too hard? Well I'm not on Beta myself so I can't really say anything with any certainty, but it sounds to me like they're making these dungeons the way the used to be. In WOLK, people breeze through, one wipe and they bolt. In Vanilla and some cases BC (Heroic Shadowlabs), dungeons were expected to be hard. CC had to be used, and people had to be smart and be responsible for themselves (watching aggro, bandaging, etc. Remember bandaging? Good times.) In short, I hope that these dungeons remain a good challenge.
    What blizzard has done is basically compressed the usual 7 zones per expansion into 5 zones. What this has done is to put it in wrath terms is you go from Borean Tundra/Howling Fjord (Vashjir/hyjal) straight to Icecrown/storm peaks (Deepholm/twilight Highlands). There is no middle leveling spot.

    So you go from pretty easy mobs in the zone to stuff that damn near one shots you.

    You need to factor in the LFD tool as you level to gain access to the items you need to do the higher end leveling zones. Jumping striaght into a level 84-85 zone in your level 80 epics isn't going to work. That why people think its hard. They undergear the zone. something people are not used to.
  1. TickTickTick's Avatar
    To all people saying "paladin spam all the time": in case you didn't realize it, i'll tell you that paladin class is one of the most changed come cataclysm, and i mean every spec. It's logical that people have many questions and there are some issues that must be talked about.
  1. CrazyKenny's Avatar
    Where's our Duck pet?
  1. TickTickTick's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cernunnos View Post
    What blizzard has done is basically compressed the usual 7 zones per expansion into 5 zones. What this has done is to put it in wrath terms is you go from Borean Tundra/Howling Fjord (Vashjir/hyjal) straight to Icecrown/storm peaks (Deepholm/twilight Highlands). There is no middle leveling spot.
    Oh no no no. Right now the path is like this: Hyjal > Vashj'ir (or opposite) > Deepholme > Uldum > Twilight Highlands. And you have to do all quests in every zone (well, you will probably ding 85 before ending all the quests in Highlands). And this is from 80 level starting experience. Right now I lack 4 bars to 84 level and finished full Vashj'ir and Deepholme (and most of Hyjal, but there's one quest bugged which prevents you to continiue the story). I even recall Blizzard saying that you will have to finish every zone to ding 85.
  1. Gilian's Avatar
    I would love to be testing the beta.

    I can't say if something is too hard or not on beta, obviously. But I think a lot of people say it is hard too fast because if you started playing in WotLK everything is hard because you got boosted by experienced raiders with at least 1 tier higher gear than you need to do heroic 5 man dungeons.

    And really, how hard can solo questing and 5 man dungeons be? I hope they keep it hard because the 9 - 10 million subscribers who have been playing for at least 2 to 3 years want some challanges also, I guess.
  1. Joniebonie's Avatar
    Secondary effect on Heroic Leap
    Adding a secondary effect to Heroic Leap, like a Thunder Clap or letting you GET OUT OF ROOTS might be a good role for a glyph.

    Fuck yeah
  1. Gilian's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by keymil View Post
    Oh no no no. Right now the path is like this: Hyjal > Vashj'ir (or opposite) > Deepholme > Uldum > Twilight Highlands. And you have to do all quests in every zone (well, you will probably ding 85 before ending all the quests in Highlands). And this is from 80 level starting experience. Right now I lack 4 bars to 84 level and finished full Vashj'ir and Deepholme (and most of Hyjal, but there's one quest bugged which prevents you to continiue the story). I even recall Blizzard saying that you will have to finish every zone to ding 85.
    I think you didn't really understand what he was trying to explain. I think he means that the difficulty between level 82 and level 84 quests is the same as the difficulty between level 72 and 79 quests. People are not used to that and figure they can easily do level 84 quests and dungeons in level 82 gear.

    The difficulty of the quests and dungeons and the gear ramp up (is that correct english?) twice as fast as in WotLK because there are only 5 levels added to Cataclysm.
  1. Narshe's Avatar
    Im looking forward to harder mobs while questing and for regular/heroic dungeons to be hard again. My only concern atm is server stability when you have everyone cramped into a single zone at a time, like it used to be in TBC. I was very happy when Wotlk had both Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra to choose from, then moving onto Dragonblight and Grizzly Hills, respectively. It wasnt until Storm Peaks and Icecrown that a lot of players found themselves into the same zones.

    Not looking forward to having the whole realm forced into these news zones
  1. Raqubor's Avatar
    Please. Stop. Whining. About. Difficulty!
    Please!!

    Hard dungeons and hard levelling! Finally back to basics!

    This calls for the usual troll meme: L2P! Oh and L2R!

    Please tune the dungeons to be challenging so that at least we can have fun for a month before you nerf everything because of the bads and whiners!
  1. Alianthos's Avatar
    Stop saying Blizz is all about Paladins, seriously. They just answer to questions people ask on the forum. And people have a LOT of questions about paladins revamp because, you know, revamp. You want blue post about DKs ? Fine, go play the beta, find some bugs / suggestions, post'em and there you go, blue post ! Because if no one ask anything there wont be any f*cking blue post.

    Until then, quit bitching, it's getting really annoying.
  1. Cernunnos's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gilian View Post
    I think you didn't really understand what he was trying to explain. I think he means that the difficulty between level 82 and level 84 quests is the same as the difficulty between level 72 and 79 quests. People are not used to that and figure they can easily do level 84 quests and dungeons in level 82 gear.

    The difficulty of the quests and dungeons and the gear ramp up (is that correct english?) twice as fast as in WotLK because there are only 5 levels added to Cataclysm.
    Exactly. Thank you. That was my point.

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