Build of the Month
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The War Within Alpha Development Notes
Professions Update: Concentration in The War Within
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The War Within Alpha - Warbands Feature Overview
So what 4th Alliance race could become a druid?
Inferno Booster Pack Giveaway, Demon Hunter Inferno Guide, Diablo 3 Arcade, and Demon Hunter SculptureValor of the Ancients Buff
Mists of Pandaria is going to make it easier for you to earn Valor points on your alts once your main character is capped for the week. The Valor of the Ancients buff increases the Valor earned on all of your characters on a realm by 50%, after one character has capped for the week. This comes along with another change to Valor points that limits the amount you may hold at any time to 3,000 per character.
Jaina Audio for Theramore Event
One of the recent beta patches added some more audio for Jaina during the Theramore event. If you haven't already listed to the previous audio, listen to it first! See the long standing thread about Jaina in the Mists of Pandaria forum if you are interested in more speculation and discussion of the lore!
Beta Class Balance Analysis
Warlock (Forums)There is some major bug going on with Fel Flame and Corruption & UA. Tagging a target with Fel Flame seems to cause Corruption & UA to over double in damage.
Warlock DoTs are incorrectly increasing their damage. This is a bug, and will be fixed in the next build.
Could a blue poster please confirm/deny this bug, or if it's intended? It looks like the 50% extra damage DOTs aren't benefiting from Spell Power buffs. It says 50% of normal periodic damage in the tool tip, so if this is intended, it's a pretty hard nerf from the original MG effect.
This was the aforementioned bug with Fel Flame approximately doubling the damage of Corruption, which was unintended (and doesn’t apply to the extra ticks granted by MG). For doing target dummy and theorycrafting testing, it’s probably best for you to not use Fel Flame as Affliction (unfortunately, Demonology has no such way to avoid extending Corruption). This bug has nothing to do with spellpower.
We understand that this bug is significantly skewing impressions of the Warlock specs, and hope to have a new build up to fix this soon.
Hunter (Forums)Glaive Toss incurs a 1.5s global cooldown, unlike the 1s incurred by any other direct damage hunter ability. Is this intended?
I've noticed and fixed that yesterday, actually. Fixed for the next build.
Shaman (Forums)So, if I am reading this correctly, on targets below 35% HP, each Chain Heal jump should have a 50% change to proc Earthliving, and each Healing Rain tick should have a 30% chance to proc Earthliving? Is this correct, or was the datamined change to Earhliving Weapon actually the removal of the 80% increased proc chance on Chain Heal and Healing Rain?
This is correct.
Is there any chance the developers could enlighten us as to Healing Rain's chance to proc Earthliving Weapon? It seems as though Chain Heal's is 0.2 x 0.25 = 0.05 (i.e. the chance is reduced by the maximum number of targets). Healing Rain is 0.2 x ??? = ???.
Either number will help me immensely! I am getting anywhere from 5.3 - 8% chance when testing it myself, and I just can't make these numbers reconcile with anything logical like "number of targets in the healing rain" or "number of targets at which the DR cap begins to apply". I'm interested in the proc chance when we are *above* 35% health. From there I can work out the rest. Thanks!
Earthliving has a 20% base chance to proc, and an additional 80% (additive, total of 100%) if the target was below 35% HP when the triggering heal landed. After that, the chance is multiplied by 0.3 for Healing Rain, and 0.5 for Chain Heal.
For example, a chain heal on a healthy target has a 10% chance to trigger Earthliving. A Healing Rain tick on a healthy target has a 6% chance to trigger Earthliving.
Mage (Forums)Here’s another bit of info I want to pass on sooner rather than waiting for a new build to get to you all, about Arcane Mages.
One of the defining characteristics of Arcane Mages has been that they can trade more mana for more damage, at a decreasing efficiency. In other words, they can play conservative, and use their mana as frugally as possible in order to maximize sustained damage. Or, they can play aggressively and increase their DPS now, in exchange for lower sustained damage over the course of the whole fight.
Arcane’s sustained damage is about where we want it (as well as Fire and Frost), barring some minor tweaks perhaps. But, they’re currently playing very high on their Arcane Blast stacks. The goal is to have their rotations change significantly based on which level 90 talent they pick. An Arcane Mage with Invocation should play very aggressively and frequently stop to recharge their batteries. An Arcane Mage with Rune of Power should generally play rather conservative, but stay at relatively high mana to maximize Mana Adept. And with Incanter’s Ward, an Arcane Mage should generally play the traditional mix of conserve/burn/evocate.
What we’re actually seeing are all three styles playing much more aggressively than we’re aiming for. There’s effectively a ceiling of just how much you can convert more mana into more damage. Invokers are playing so aggressively that they never drop their Arcane Charges at all, Rune users are staying at a 4 stack for a majority of the time, and Incanters are able to play more aggressively during their conserve phases and burn longer.
In order to try to solve this, we decided to try raising the ceiling. So, in the next beta build, you’ll find the max Arcane Charges has been raised from 4 to 6, and the damage increase per stack is back up to 25% from 20%. I’d like to emphasize that the goal of these changes are to create the gameplay flexibility that we’re hoping for there to be with Arcane, not to change Arcane’s overall DPS. There will likely need to be additional changes after this to readjust their damage back to where we want it. Feedback about how it feels, and theorycrafting analyzing the effects this has on them are especially appreciated.
Death Knight (Forums)Also, a little tidbit for DKs who kept reading through all that Mage stuff: Blood Tap is back off the GCD in the next build.
Doing LFR I realized that my bloodworms were doing about 35% of my healing done (compared to live, where it does less than ~5%.). I was also competing against healers on healing done. (I was averaging out to 40k HPS on the stone guards, compared to other healers who are just a bit higher.) Is this intended?
Nope, it wasn't intended. Bloodworms were getting significantly more health (and therefore healing) from pet scaling than intended. For theorycrafters, they dropped from 25% to 6% of the Death Knight’s max health.
Thanks for letting us know, this has been fixed for the next build.
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Computers - Setup of the Month (by chaud)
Each month or every 2 months, depending on the hardware evolutions, the lovely chaud will work on a couple of hardware setups for those of you who are thinking of upgrading their computer!
This month
Hard drive prices are slowly declining, but are still above the pre-flood prices, so now is still a good time to buy a SSD. The current SSD prices are still slowly moving downward, with most under $1 per gigabyte now. A few sales have even gone under 50 cents per gigabyte, so look for something on sale!
Unless you are doing a lot of video rendering or something that is similarly multithreaded, you do not need the 3770K and should spend that money elsewhere.
Make sure to keep your AMD and Nvidia drivers up to date.
Don't hesitate to post any feedback in the comments of that news post, and don't forget to visit the Computer Forum for any extra questions! If you are interested in Folding@home, take a look in our team's thread.
Peripherals/Monitors
| Component | Puppy | Dolphin |
|---|---|---|
| Monitor | Acer V223W EJBD 22-Inch Widescreen - $138 | ASUS VW246H 24-Inch Widescreen - $190 |
| Keyboard | Logitech Media Keyboard K200 - $18 | Cyborg V.5 - $49 |
| Mouse | Logitech G400 - $34 | Razer Deathadder - $42 |
| Speakers | Logitech S220 2.1 Speaker System - $23 | Logitech Z313 Speaker System - $40 |
| Component | Narwhal | Unicorn |
| Monitor | ASUS VE276Q 27-Inch - $254 | HP ZR2440W 24-inch (IPS Panel) - $363 |
| Keyboard | Logitech G110 - $52 | Razer BlackWidow (Backlit)- $70 ($104) |
| Mouse | Logitech G500 - $54 | Razer Naga (Buttons on the Side) - $72 |
| Speakers | Logitech Z323 2.1 Speaker System - $60 | Logitech Speaker System Z523 - $70 |
Puppy and Dolphin
Overclocked Puppy will outperform Dolphin when multiple threads are in use (Not WoW) and come close in most other cases.
Mix and match anything but the CPU/Motherboard combo between Puppy and Dolphin. Pick one of the two CPU/Motherboard combos.
Mix and match anything between Dolphin and Narwhal.
Overclocked Puppy will outperform Dolphin when multiple threads are in use (Not WoW) and come close in most other cases.
Mix and match anything but the CPU/Motherboard combo between Puppy and Dolphin. Pick one of the two CPU/Motherboard combos.
Mix and match anything between Dolphin and Narwhal.
| Component | Puppy | Dolphin |
|---|---|---|
| Case | NZXT GAMMA Classic - $40 | NZXT GAMMA Classic - $40 |
| Power Supply | Corsair CX500 V2 - $54 | XFX Core Edition PRO 550W - $64 |
| CPU | AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition- $110 | Intel i3-2120 - $122 |
| Heatsink | Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus - $26 | Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - $32 |
| Motherboard | ASUS M5A97 AM3+ 970 - $95 | Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H - $120 |
| Memory | 4GB PNY Optima DDR3 10600 - $25 | 8GB G.Skill DDR3 12800 - $55 |
| Graphics Card | XFX 7770 - $105 | XFX 6870 or EVGA GTX 560 - $137/ $146 |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB - $68 | Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - $100 |
| DVD | Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $20 | Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $20 |
| Total | $543 | $695 |
Narwhal and Unicorn
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Narwhal and Unicorn. SSDs are always optional.
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Narwhal and Unicorn. SSDs are always optional.
| Component | Narwhal | Unicorn |
|---|---|---|
| Case | Cooler Master HAF 912 - $60 | Cooler Master HAF932 - $154 |
| Power Supply | Corsair 650TX V2 - $90 | Corsair 750HX - $156 |
| CPU | Intel i5-3570K - $220 | Intel i7-3770K - $330 |
| Heatsink | Thermaltake Frio - $60 | Noctua 6 NH-D14 - $85 |
| Motherboard | ASUS P8Z77-V LK - $146 | ASUS P8Z77-V - $190 |
| Memory | 8GB G.Skill DDR3 12800 - $56 | 8GB G.Skill DDR3 12800 - $56 |
| Graphics Card | ASUS 7850 DirectCU II - $260 | XFX 7970 Black Edition OR EVGA GTX 670 FTW - $430 / $430 |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black - $100 | Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black - $100 |
| SSD | Crucial 128 GB m4 (Review) - $105 OR Corsair Force Series GT 120 GB - $129 | SAMSUNG 830 128GB (Review) - $99 OR OCZ 120 GB Vertex 3 (Review) - $95 |
| DVD | Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $20 | Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $20 |
| Total | $1012 - $1141 | $1521 - $1620 |
The Daily Blink
The Daily Blink talks about the recent subscriber number releases.
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