World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

This week on Azeroth Choppers, we find Paul Jr.’s crew stressed over an upcoming visit with Team Horde and Team Alliance to go over their bikes so far. Luckily, a surprise from Blizzard HQ may provide the inspiration the teams need to get things rolling again.

Keep up to date on all of the latest episodes at www.AzerothChoppers.com, and let your faction’s war cry be heard with #AzerothChoppers.

Reminder: The first batch of BlizzCon 2014 tickets goes on sale Wednesday, May 7 at 7 p.m. PDT. When the time comes, hit the link below for your chance to snag some.

Get BlizzCon 2014 Tickets Here

Tickets usually go fast, so if you want to attend this year’s show, it pays to be prepared. Ticket sales are being handled through Eventbrite this year, so a few things are different from 2013. It’s worth reading our BlizzCon Ticket Info page to learn more, and we’ve assembled a few key bits of information here to help you get ready:

The Important Stuff

• During the checkout process, ticket purchasers will need to provide the full names and valid email addresses for each attendee (up to 4). You won’t be able to leave these blank, but you’ll have until June 6 to make changes, so don’t worry too much if you’re not sure who’s coming yet.

• If you’re not yet sure who your guests will be, it’s best to enter your own name and email address for all of your tickets during the checkout process.

• A couple of months before the show, the ticket purchaser will receive up to 4 emails (one for each ticket purchased), each containing a unique bar code and the name of one of your attendees. Attendees must print out and present this bar-code email along with matching photo ID at BlizzCon to receive their badge granting admission to the show.

Remember that all of these badge emails will be sent directly to the ticket purchaser, and it will be up to the purchaser to distribute them to their guests.

• When ticket sales begin, make sure to select the correct quantity of tickets you want before you click Order Now. You will not have a chance to change the quantity after you’ve entered the checkout process, and if you try to go back, you’ll risk losing your place.

Other Handy Info

• After clicking Order Now, you may find yourself in a “waiting room” before you enter the checkout process. Ticket buyers will be sent from the waiting room to checkout in the order they arrived, and there’s no need to refresh your browser. Keep in mind that being in the waiting room doesn’t necessarily mean you’re guaranteed tickets.

• Once you’ve entered the checkout process, you’ll have 8 minutes to complete your order—a countdown will be displayed on-screen so you know how much time you have remaining. After 8 minutes, the tickets will be released for others to buy, drawing from those in the waiting room first.

• Keep your browser window open until your ticket purchase is confirmed!

• Keep in mind that tickets are only being sold online through Eventbrite. Customer support won't be able to place orders for you.

Check out the BlizzCon Ticket Info page for more details. Remember, tickets go on sale May 7 at 7 p.m. PT and May 10 at 10 a.m. at the link below. Good luck!

Get BlizzCon 2014 Tickets Here

I've been following this thread all week – we wanted to provide information sooner, but we try to be discreet when it comes to measures taken to address exploits and game abuse. We applied a band-aid fix last week to scale down the drop-rate of Uncommon, Common, and Poor (green, white, and grey) items inside Burning Crusade raids and dungeons, proportional to group size – this is the same way gold works, and if you had a full 5-player party running a dungeon nothing would have changed, but if you were soloing a raid like Black Temple you would have seen a large reduction in vendorable items. Clearly that change, particularly undocumented, impacted innocent players. With today's maintenance, we've reverted that temporary fix and replaced it with an approach that should have zero impact on legitimate players.

That said, while we're very supportive of the activity of running legacy content, whether for transmog gear, crafting materials, trying to get that elusive second Warglaive, or just seeing places you never got to experience the first time around, we do need to keep an eye on the gold rewarded in the process. The core issue is that dungeons and raids yield much larger quantities of loot and materials, because they're designed to be split among 5, 10, or 25 players. But when you can go back and solo them later on, they can end up being disproportionately lucrative. We want them to still be rewarding and profitable (and clearly getting 3 grey drops from a full BT clear this past week was well short of that), but we may adjust the vendor-loot yield of legacy raids going forward into Warlords to keep the overall economy balanced. In any event, we'll provide much clearer documentation and advance notice if and when we do that.

Apologies for the radio silence regarding this change over the course of the past week.

well this blows........ guess no more running bc content, so much for my lock getting her trash drop shoulders which I think where a 1.3% drop rate from all the elf trash mods in TC
At no point did we (or would we) touch epic drop rates.

In any case, just to be 100% clear and for tl;dr purposes: The change we made last week was temporary and has been reverted. Everything is now back to how it was.

Racials
1% resistance racials are just kind of a joke/insult and always have been
They're for flavor, more than anything. Definitely not intended as a joke or insult. (Celestalon)

Classes
Fun fact. I've been working on de-cluttering spell visuals, and working with our artists to make them more efficient... (Celestalon)
....(for better FPS). Yesterday, I found one player spell visual that was using the Sunwell. Yes, the actual Sunwell, at 3% size. (Celestalon)
Lol. WoW's spell effects have become too detailed idd. Although decluttering vision is just as important as FPS.
Yes. The primary goal of what I'm working on is decluttering. It ties in to increasing FPS as well, so doing some of that with it. (Celestalon)
Very nice! How about pets, now that we're at it? They've caused a bit too much noise in PvP in particular.
That's more challenging. Nothing to announce in that regard, YET, other than toning down the visuals of the spells they cast. (Celestalon)

I know this is old, but is it just snapshotting with actual STATS that's going away? Snapshotting with a self +% effect stays?
Many class abilities will specifically call out that they increase the damage of "your next X" or "all Xs cast while active". (Celestalon)
That includes Tiger's Fury and Eclipse. (Celestalon)

With the squish, does it mean that mana will be increased as you get more int, like it used to be before MoP?
Negative. (Celestalon)

When exactly additional haste dot tick occurs if dot never wears off?
There are no breakpoints. It just smoothly ticks faster. (Celestalon)
Even if Dots are more like "x rate" in "y time" in wod how can we calculate haste contribution to dot damage?
Much more simply. [Hasted DoT DPS] = [Baseline DoT DPS] * (1 + Haste). Yes, really that simple. +30% Haste = +30% Damage. (Celestalon)

Not clear in the patch notes: do self-only movement passives stack at all with the temporary bonus?
Yes. You gain the benefit of ALL self-passives, and the ONE highest temporary/shared. (Celestalon)
How does Cheetah and Pack play into this? Does move speed enchants stack with Cheetah, but not Pack?
Cheetah kind of blurs the line between being passive or temporary. It falls on the 'temporary' side. (Celestalon)

re: movement speed - Will Dash stack additively with passives? e.g. Cat form (25%) + Dash (70%) = 95%? Can you clarify?
Yes. (Celestalon)

Will an exclusive move speed bonus stack with or replace self, passive move speed bonuses? From the notes it sounds like stack.
Stack. You get the benefit of ALL of the self-passives, and ONE of the shared/temporary (the strongest one). (Celestalon)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
blood death knights play style is engaging, fun and awesome, agreed by most tanks, don't change how fundamentaly it works.
We agree, and are continuing to iterate. Blood will stay very reactive. (Celestalon)

Curious why GCD capping is considered an "issue" for Blood. Always found ability blackouts to be infuriating while tanking.
Because their gameplay is very reactive, compared to other tanks, and they need space to time their reactions better. (Celestalon)

can you reevaluate dk frost mastery, since 85% of 2h frost damage is physical? feels like 2h gets forgotten sometime
It's intended that 2H and DW have different gearing priorities. (Celestalon)

I'm assuming that the DoT changes will also be applied to DKs, correct?
Yes, it's a global systems change. (Celestalon)

Will multistrikes of Death/Rune Strike trigger multiple shields and/or heals?
No. (Celestalon)
So the benefit of Multistrike for Blood DKs is solely additional threat/DPS, or am I missing something?
Scent of Blood. See the patch notes. (Celestalon)

so runestrike is cut then?
Yes. We don't think anyone will shed any tears over Rune Strike's special animation or exciting kit (since it had none of either). (Celestalon)

With DC now UH-specific, most of a DK's ranged skills come from talents or specs. Thoughts on a DK gap-closer?
Different classes are different. Not having a way to get TO a target instantly is an intended weakness. Death Grip helps though (Celestalon)
True but you must consider some of the abilities like DC are iconic for Dks.
Which is why we're giving Death Coil back to Blood. (Frost *really* doesn't need it, so not giving it back to them) (Celestalon)
ummm why do blood dk need death coil?
Instead of Rune Strike. Death Coil is simply better. (Celestalon)
Am I right to assume that Rune shields will come from Death coil now? Will it have range from the unholy perk?
Still iterating on the general Blood design changes. Not satisfied with how 'proactive' it's making them. Want to stay reactive. (Celestalon)
proactive is better than reactive
Not for Blood DKs. Reactivity has been their defining characteristic, and we don't want to change that. (Celestalon)

I like it. Will howling blast cause necrotic plauge on all targets it causes ff on?
Yes, which means that Plaguebearer+Necrotic would be a pointless combo for Frost. That's one problem we're currently considering. (Celestalon)

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Hi. Just wondering how will SotF work out with Rejuv, Regrowth, Wild Growth and lifebloom in WoD with no snapshot. Ty!
Resto Soul of the Forest does still affect the (entirety of the) next spell. (Celestalon)

Question on Ursa Major passive. Does it have a cd or a max stack?
No. (Celestalon)

with rogue CP's being on the rogue not the mob, what about cats? will those now be on the player and not the mob as well?
Yes. (Celestalon)

Will Insect Swarm still generate Energy while in Eclipse?
Yes. It's definitely odd in that regard. As a general comment, we feel like we've come too far with Eclipse uptime; you spend... (Celestalon)
...so little time *not* Eclipsed, that you just feel "normal, and occasionally weak", instead of "strong and weak". (Celestalon)
Ty for the reply. I think I understand. Just seems weird since the goal was always to be in Eclipse as much as possible.
Oh yeah, totally. YOUR goal as a player is to be in Eclipse as much as possible. WE have just let 'possible' get too high lately. (Celestalon)

BDruids need a lot of equip to be competitive in dps, why bring one over a warlock or a mobile hunter without tanquility?
Because they're a good player, and the do competitive DPS, and provide competitive utility, at *all* gear levels. (Celestalon)
in mists moonkin with low itemlvl = low dps. thats just not true that moonkin does competitive dps at low itemlvl ...
We're talking about 6.0 at this point, not 5.0. (Celestalon)

Hunter (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
will core hounds now be the default choice for raiding? (buffs/debuffs will be covered with 20 people)
No, it's like old Thorns. The boss would have to auto attack the pet to get any damage. (Celestalon)

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Three potential blinks on frost mages? or will displacement not be refreshed by frost perk?
The Frost perk would add one charge to Blink. (Celestalon)

Just for clarification, the new Frost Bomb won't detonate anymore at the end of its duration?
Correct. Just from frozen Ice Lances. (Celestalon)

Will multistrike crits from Ice Lance set off Frost Bomb?
No. But the Frost Bomb explosion can multistrike. (Celestalon)

Why is Flamestrike untouched? It's still useless outside of conjunction with Presence of Mind.
It's not untouched; there's a Draenor Perk. Also, it wasn't useless; it's absolutely worth using without that anyway. (Celestalon)
What perk? Trash moves faster in those 2s than the spell radius. Huge error margin. Rarely seen mages use it throughout MoP.
You can definitely aim a Flamestrike to hit your intended targets. If trash moves faster than the radius... lead the trash. (Celestalon)

Why making Mirror Image a talent? Aggro control was useful for soloing/helpful in dungeons... Why not sumoning a familiar ?
Reducing cooldown stacking and button bloat. As a talent, you can still take it for times you really want it. (Celestalon)
And you still have a bunch of options for aggro control. (Celestalon)
while all else had those tools removed. That said, choosing between bomb and MI is horrible, love having both
Bombs and Mirror Image are on different rows... (Celestalon)

Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
So does this iteration of CJL work in Serpent Stance? Does statue still cause eminence as well?
CJL is for minor damage and mana in Serpent, and for Chi in Crane. Eminence is only in Crane. (Celestalon)
So mistweavers have 3 different things to do in down time?Drink mana tea, channel CJL and fistweave?
Fistweaving is for damage, not for downtime. CJL and Mana Tea are the same thing: Stop healing to regen mana. CJL will grant Tea. (Celestalon)

You have a choice to generate mana tea or not to, I don't see how I'd be wrong choosing the former?
Because you want to heal instead? Unless you channel the full 4sec, you get none. (Celestalon)
This entire conversation has been under the context of squeezing CJL into downtime. When we -won't- be healing or DPSing
Then sure, if you've got total downtime, yes, you'll want to CJL. Not sure how often you expect that to happen... (Celestalon)
Mana Tea is a very efficient but very limited conversion of time->mana (with an HPS loss due to not healing). CJL is now an... (Celestalon)
inefficient but unlimited conversion of time->mana (again, with an HPS loss due to not healing). (Celestalon)
We don't expect it to be something you do a ton of. (Celestalon)

If it did add Mana Tea stacks directly, it becomes a filler to press when the raid is totally safe - not just emergencies.
What difference does it being mana tea vs mana make? (Besides mana tea scales with crit) (Celestalon)

Any insight into Zen Meditation's purpose in 6.0? Right now it's a solo-soaking tool. Current intended mechanics of it useless?
Defensive cooldown, yep. The grounding effect is a minor side benefit. (Celestalon)

I take it you want to slow down WW Monk's Action per Minute. It will encourage FoF and EB more but wouldn't it favor more haste?
GCD-capping is the problem we're trying to solve there. You shouldn't be so restricted by GCDs. For comparison, Monks get nearly twice as many GCDs filled per energy than Rogues/Cats. (Celestalon)
I hope this doesn't mean a rework of speed of playstyle. One of the reasons I like my ww is how button mashy it is.
It doesn't; we do too. (Celestalon)

I understand the increase of Jab energy cost to decrease GCD's used, but will all moves damage be increase to compensate?
Yes. (Celestalon)
are windwalkers really GCD-capped outside of Hero? :/ doubtful here
Yes, absolutely. Every 40 energy = 1 Jab, 1 BoK, 0.24 Combo Breakers. (Celestalon)

will crane's zeal remain active if you switch to serpent stance?
No. (Celestalon)

Does WW aura stack with boot enchant? If not then enchant still required to stack with tertiary stat even for monks
As the patch notes clearly say, yes. (Though the move speed enchant is likely to move to a different slot from Boots) (Celestalon)

Is tiger strikes going to have a reduced chance to proc? +50% multistrike seems powerful for current proc rate.
Nope. (Celestalon)
WAIT. Is it going to proc in serpent stance?
No. (Celestalon)

Will Healing Spheres spawned by Path of Mists benefit from Enduring Healing Sphere and will they despawn when you exit combat?
No, and no. (Celestalon)

Will the changes to Fists of Fury affect how SeF works with it? Will clones still do 0dmg if a clone+player hits same target?
Yes. SEF clones are not a single target DPS gain. (Celestalon)

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
not QQ, sPriest is doing fine, I am optimistic about the MS changes, but why remove our off healing from our lvl 90 talents?
So that we could make them do more damage, and not have healing affect your talent choice. (Celestalon)
aw always liked being that guy who did damage and helped the healers, will we get anything to keep that feel? Thnx for reply
That's what Vampiric Embrace is for. (Celestalon)

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Rogue sub seems to have more maintaining durations (hemo, rup, SnD) than active skill use, any plans to address this in WoD?
That's the intended design of the spec; its gameplay focuses on juggling multiple balls at a time. Very difficult rotation. (Celestalon)

Shaman (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
I see new wolf models. Can you please confirm that shamans ghost wolf will use the new wolf model? Please pretty.
#confirmed (holinka)

will frostband imbune be used by enhancement over flametounge for PVE and PVP?
Nope. (Celestalon)

hmm why not make a tier about summoning elementals for shammies? Every min we can potentially summon 1 if it goes live as is.
Because Shamans aren't a pet class, and we don't want to turn them into one. (Celestalon)
While I get you don't want shamans to be pet classes, you realize fire elemental is huge for Enhance, they basically are pet.
Yes, and we want to tone that down, by moving the damage from that Fire Ele to the Shaman. (Celestalon)

Will the new Echo of Elements cooldown reset for Ele Shaman be overridden by Lava Surge procs, since it resets the CD anyway?
No, they're totally compatible. Only one will be used. (Celestalon)

does condensation totem have a in game tracker for the spell power effect? If that makes sense...
Kind of. It has a buff that includes the spellpower, so someone could write an addon for it. However, it isn't really useful... (Celestalon)
..., since the SP is consumed and more is gained, on every cast. (Celestalon)

I don't see how it benefits Elemental. You'll never do double-ES due to Fulm and LvB can get clipped by procs.
What do you mean "LvB can get clipped by procs"? For single target damage, you'll primarily Echo your LvBs for double LvB. (Celestalon)

in regards to ST damage anyway. I haven't seen new Earthquake numbers so I can't make an accurate assumption on AoE.
If you get both an Echo AND a Lava Surge proc while in the middle of casting a LvB, it would only consume one. EXTREMELY rare. (Celestalon)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
I love Charge, it's iconic and I see the parallels with, say, Roll. But the row could be rolled into Glyphs, free space for more
A) You have very few abilities to talent at lvl 15. B) Yes, we're planning to stick with a Charge-focused row. (Celestalon)

Warlords of Draenor Stats
Will multistrike affect DoTs? If so, can multistrike ticks proc talents like Shadow FDCL?
A) Yes. B) Only if it says so specifically (which we are likely to make some do so). (Celestalon)

Does multistrike include a spell visual as well? Don't believe it does with the trinkets on live, though I could be wrong.
It mimics the spell's visual too in 6.0. (Celestalon)

With the stat squish, will you still be able to do content for that level with current level gear? IE. Karazhan at 70, MC at 60?
Yes. (Celestalon)

So all non-cloth gear will always have two primary stats and the non-used one is greyed out? Why not only show the used one
So that the Death Knight knows and understands that the Holy Paladin who needs on the same item as him isn't just an asshole. (Celestalon)
And so that the Holy Paladin knows and understands that if she switches to Ret, that item will still be useful to her. (Celestalon)

Why make armor grey for non-tanks? Still provides some benefit, possibly interesting for solo & PvP. Worried about loot drama?
Clarity. It will not do anything for non-tanks. (Celestalon)

I believe he's specifying that BONUS ARMOR does nothing for non-tanks, period.
Yes. Armor still works for non-tanks, of course. *Bonus* Armor only works for tanks. (Celestalon)
the difference in the tooltip what will be, 2 different armor stats or 2 different color?
Bonus Armor appears like the other stats. (Celestalon)

PvE
GC mentioned that a large focus of raid design in WoD was eliminating 'on-the-pull burst'. What has been done for that?
Skull Banner, Stormlash, Engineering Tinker, Legendary Helm/Cloak, Snapshotting. Plus for Hunters, Stampede. Hunters weren't bad. (Celestalon)
are trinkets still going to proc on the pull? trinkets + pre pot + lust + bestial wrath + stampede (still a talent) is big.
If you take Stampede then you're not taking Murder of Crows, so that's gone instead (or Lynx Rush, etc). Still will be SOME... (Celestalon)
...proc trinkets that activate on the pull. But you'll likely see significantly more passive trinkets than before as well. (Celestalon)
will the 'less input lag system' you mentioned in the fatboss interview work for on-the-pull lag as well?
That's usually a case of your network connection, or occasionally the server, being overloaded. Improved by other changes we've made (Celestalon)
I doubt my connection is the bottleneck, given that specific fights are notorious for pull lag (Malkorok) but alrighty.
You'd be surprised, actually. Some fights (Malkorok) involve much more combat data sent to clients. (Celestalon)

So with the new battle rez system can one person cast multiple consecutive rezzes after enough time?
Yes. (WatcherDev)

unclear on new system: is it one raid wide rez per 4.5 minutes? (i.e. if 2 people die simultaneously I cannot rez them both)
If you have a larger raid and it's later in a (long) fight and you have 4 charges, and 4 people die at once, you can rez all 4. (WatcherDev)

Concerned that new Brez mechanic might enforce breakpoints based on boss enrage timer?
Berserk timers are not generally very tight on non-Mythic, and benefit of a late extra rez is uncertain; many variables involved. (WatcherDev)
Will Mythic berserk timers be on par with MoP heroic or is that being loosened as well?
Varies by fight, but general philosophy isn't changing. Shorter DPS-check fights (a la Malkorok, Norushen) will have tight zerks. (WatcherDev)

PvP
Will we be able to queue for rated arenas after the pre-expansion patch hits?
No but skirmishes will be available (holinka)

Are all brackets going back to their 10 level ranges? 10-19, 20-29 etc? Would be awesome.
yes (holinka)

Warlords of Draenor
Can I skip the opening hour long intro and hare off into Draenor?
.Here's a Q for you, what's the right amount of time for an intro experience before you're left to explore on your own (Muffinus)

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Artcraft. I’m Chris Robinson, senior art director on World of Warcraft, and today our environment team is going to give you a look at one of the zones we’re creating for Warlords of Draenor, as well as share some insight into how we approach creating environment art. Take it away Gary!

Hey, I’m Gary Platner, lead environment artist on World of Warcraft. I direct a team of artists who help create the world . . . of Warcraft. We shape the land; texture it; place the trees, rocks, and buildings; and design the “sets” where our quest team will later place the “actors.” Today we’re going to be showing you some of what's going into the creation of the Spires of Arak. This location that would later become known as Terokkar Forest, but in Draenor-terms, this zone is the home of the regal, sinister, and flighted arakkoa.

One of the best parts about working on WoW for me is when we first start a new exterior zone. Creativity reigns, and almost anything goes—it’s real blue sky stuff. When we started working on Spires of Arak, we only had some basic ideas: tall rocky spires jutting out of a dense forest. So we got together to talk about what that might look like, and soon afterward, artist Jimmy Lo started making concepts.

Based on these concepts, we could tell right away that this zone was going to present some unique challenges. The biggest one was how we were going to build the large spiky rocks that would give the zone its distinctive look. We had two basic methods in mind to create those spires. Some of us thought that the best way would be to make most of the rocks as 3D props instead of using our terrain editor to sculpt the landscape into tall spires. 3D props have some distinct advantages, since building a prop allows for the creation of fully 3D objects of any shape, which gives us a lot of design freedom. The downside is they tend to be difficult to blend into the landscape in a natural-looking way (see the original Blade’s Edge Mountains in Outland). They’re also much more difficult to iterate on as design needs change. If instead we used our terrain editor to create the spires, that would allow us a lot of freedom to iterate on zone layout and design without needing to fidget with large pieces of premade geometry, with the potential downside of not being able to do the concept justice.


Our design team wanted to at least give the terrain editor option a chance, so they embarked on creating a proof of concept to see how well it could work. A lot of us contributed to the Spires of Arak, but ultimately Matt Sanders (exterior level designer) and Kelli Hoover (environment artist) were tasked with creating the zone. Kelli gathered resource material and started to do some paint-overs of our concepts in order to unify a distinctive new color palette. Meanwhile, Matt created the proof of concept in our editing tools in order to test ideas for creating large spiky rocks with the exterior terrain editor.

Kelli gathered a lot of reference pictures, paying special attention to color and mood. She then slightly recolored Jimmy’s concepts to model different times of day.


Then Kelli moved on to testing texture ideas by creating rough and quick block-out textures, which aren’t intended to look final but help give us an idea of color and detail. We can paint these rough textures over the landscape and do various tests to help us see how they interact. We can also see how the textures change and distort as they are painted on steep mountain terrain.


As you can see here, Matt and Kelli experimented with different textures and geometry in an attempt to duplicate the concepts from Jimmy.

Kelli and Matt discovered that using a striated rock texture would actually work better than a simpler rock pattern, and the striations give the impression of upward movement. These linear texture shapes would also bend and stretch well over the exterior terrain creating a really unique look for the zone.

Once Matt and Kelli finalized their demo zone and we agreed that everything was heading in the right direction, the real work could begin. Now the whole zone could be completed using the style and techniques that worked in the small demo zone. They’d still have to work out the look for some of the smaller subzones, though, like dense forests, beaches, and a massive thorny bramble where the Shattered Hand orcs dwell.


Last but not least, we’ve prepared a short video for you to demonstrate the various steps involved in creating the Spires of Arak. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to sharing more with you in the future!