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    Ra-den's Abilities, 5.2 Class Reviews - Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Blue Posts, Fan Art

    More on Co-op Improvements, Mob Density Changes for Inferno Only, The Job of a Community Manager

    Isle of Thunder Day 2 - 45% Unlocked (Stage 1)

    Throne of Thunder - Ra-den's Abilities
    It appears Ra-den is no longer shrouded in mystery, as some of his abilities have been added to the Throne of Thunder section of the official site. His health (446.6M–1339.8M) has also been listed. The audio files for him are also below in case you missed them the first time around.

    You can find more spells that may be related by searching WoWDB for spells added in Patch 5.2 that share similar names.


    Name Description
    Fatal Strike
    An unerringly accurate strike that disrupts an enemy target's very being. Undefended, this attack is fatal, though active defensive abilities (Shield Block, Shield of the Righteous, Shuffle, Blood Shield, or Savage Defense) will offer some measure of protection.
    Imbued with Anima
    Empowered with Anima.
    Imbued with Vita
    Empowered with Vita.
    Materials of Creation
    Conjures the forces of creation to empower the caster.
    Murderous Strike
    An unerringly accurate strike that turns the life force of the target against them, inflicting Shadow damage every 2 sec for 10 sec. The damage dealt is equal to the health of the target at the time of the attack.
    Ruin
    Deals 100,000 Plague damage to all nearby enemies every 2 sec.
    Ruin Bolt
    Deals 1,000,000 Plague damage to an enemy target. This damage bypasses most damage reduction effects.
    Summon Crackling Stalker
    Summons a construct of Vita.
    Summon Sanguine Horror
    Summons a construct of Anima.
    Unleashed Anima
    An eruption of pure Anima energy engulfs all nearby enemies, increasing their maximum health by 100%, but also causing them to suffer 70,000 Shadow damage every 1 sec. This effect lasts until negated.
    Unleashed Vita
    Deals 600,000 Nature damage to all enemies.
    Unstable Anima
    Corrupted life energy erupts from the afflicted player, dealing 2,500,000 Shadow damage, and an additional 250,000 Shadow damage every 1 sec for 10 sec, divided among all allies within 8 yards. If no nearby allies are struck, a catastrophic explosion will result.
    Unstable Vita
    Charges the target with storm energy, causing a surge of lightning every 8 sec, which transfers Unstable Vita to the farthest available target. The streaking lightning deals 400,000 Nature damage to all players in its path, and afflicts those it touches with Vita Sensitivity.


    No Flying for Leveling Alts in Pandaria
    Zarhym shared that there are no plans to let you fly on alts when leveling in Pandaria.



    Sunsong Ranch Work Order Quest Changes
    Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
    One of the great new features in 5.2 is the ability to take over the Sunsong Ranch farm in the Valley of the Four Winds. You can do this by talking to Nana Mudclaw after reaching Exalted with The Tillers, and unlocking all 16 plots of the farm. When you take over the farm you can begin taking work orders for specific factions in Pandaria, allowing you to earn reputation with them simply by planting, harvesting, and delivering the items you grow.

    The way your receive work orders on the Sunsong Ranch farm was changed recently which may cause some confusion. If you've been doing your work orders you probably have logged in and had the second work order in the series automatically pop-up in your quest list. This has been changed, and from now on you’ll receive the quest when you start harvesting your plants, or when you interact with the drop-off crate.

    Enjoy farming for rep! nyuknyuknyuk

    Patch 5.2 Class Reviews - Rogue, Shaman, Warlock
    Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
    Many of the 5.2 patch notes fall into two main categories: balance tuning and talent adjustments. Unless we called out a specific reason otherwise, you can assume that the various +10% or -10% adjustments you’ll see in the patch notes were made to keep all of the specs where we want them in 5.2. In some cases these are changes to reflect the different environment in 5.2 with new gear and set bonuses. In other cases, we are correcting issues we found in patch 5.1.

    In terms of talent adjustments, while we’re still happy overall with the Mists of Pandaria talent overhaul, we do recognize that there were some talents that weren’t tuned as well as they could be or just weren’t attractive. That’s not to say that all talents should be all things to all players all the time; some talents are situationally quite attractive, and we’re happy with those. On the other hand, others just never see much use and we would rather provide players real options for each talent tier.

    Note: The purpose of these blogs is mostly to provide an overview of the design intentions behind our 5.2 changes, rather than to detail the thought process behind every individual note. You can refer to the patch notes for specific changes and numbers.


    We had a lot of work to do on the Rogue talent tree, probably the most of any class.

    • Rogues, historically a PvP mainstay, felt underpowered and weren’t well-represented in high-end PvP. We wanted to change that.
    • In PvE, we wanted to tone down the Cleave capabilities of Combat so it didn’t feel like a mandatory spec for some fights.
    • We wanted to give Rogues a little more PvE utility instead of feeling quite so selfish.

    While we tweaked several talents to make them more attractive, there were large-scale changes to two tiers. In an attempt to balance a perennial problem we’d had balancing Rogues in PvP, we initially asked them to choose between Preparation and Shadowstep. Forcing Rogues to choose between the two worked . . . so well that Rogues felt ineffective in PvP. While we tried to make it a trade-off between the defensive capabilities of Prep and the movement capabilities of Burst of Speed or Shadowstep, as with the Mage tree, we eventually came to the conclusion that only movement could compete with movement. We gave Prep to all Rogues, buffed Burst of Speed, and created a new talent, Cloak and Dagger to be part of the movement tier. Cloak and Dagger causes a Rogue to teleport to their target whenever they use an opener. Combined with dropping out of combat to re-Stealth, Shadow Dance, and the Subterfuge talent, we expect that it can be used to accomplish some pretty interesting things.

    Similarly, while Anticipation proved very popular in the level 90 tier, Versatility did not, and in fact, Anticipation felt like it provided the benefits of Versatility, only better. We retired Versatility and added a new talent, Marked for Death, which will mark a target and instantly generate 5 combo points on that target. When the target dies, the cooldown will reset.

    In addition to giving Rogues Preparation baseline, we also wanted to increase Rogue burst in PvP. That may sound backwards given that we are often trying to reduce the burst of classes in PvP, but we think Rogues had the opposite problem, where their large component of passive damage from white attacks and poisons coupled with the low damage per hit of using a pair of small weapons meant that Rogues had significant issues closing the deal and taking an enemy down during a burst window. Our solution here was to allow Rogues to store up more energy in PvP through a new set bonus. This means a Rogue will have to work for their burst, but it will be there if they plan for it.
    Blade Flurry has been an iconic spell for Combat for some time, and while we initially discussed just giving it to all Rogues, we thought Combat lost too much under that design. Ultimately, we like that Combat is good at cleaving. The problem was it was so good that it felt mandatory for many Rogues to switch to Combat for some fights. Ideally, a Rogue who prefers Assassination or Subtlety should be able to stick with that spec, knowing they might fall a little behind on Cleave situations, but can make up for it in other situations. We changed the way that Blade Flurry works, so that it will strike more targets for less damage. Combat will still be the best choice for AoE fights, but not so much so that it will be at an overwhelming advantage. We’ll be increasing Combat single-target damage via an increase to Vitality to compensate. Overall, we hope that most players will feel comfortable sticking with the spec they are most comfortable playing without feeling compelled to swap between fights. Subtlety will see increased single-target damage via an increase to the effects of Sanguinary Vein.

    PvE utility is very subjective. Some players equate it with a raid-wide damage reduction cooldown, while for others, the utility has to be something unique that nobody else can provide. We add that caveat just because we don’t think the community will ever agree on who brings “enough” or “the best” utility. The change we made for Rogues was simple: Smoke Bomb now provides damage reduction, so in a similar fashion to abilities like Rallying Cry, a Rogue can help survive against, oh say, just for example, the damage a huge freakin’ dinosaur can dish out.


    We had a few goals with Shaman:

    • As with the other classes, we wanted to make unattractive talents more appealing. Shaman had a similar problem to Druids, where certain choices were perceived as good for e.g. Elemental but not Restoration.
    • We wanted to buff Elemental dispel vulnerability and overall survivability in PvP.
    • We wanted to give Enhancement a very slight boost for PvP.
    • We also wanted to improve Elemental’s target switching and multi-target damage in PvE.
    • We adjusted some Glyphs, some because they were too good, others because they felt mandatory.

    We made several adjustments to talents to broaden their appeal. For example, Ancestral Swiftness now provides 10% melee haste in order for Enhancement Shaman to take it more seriously as an option, while staying at 5% spell haste since Restoration Shaman already liked the talent.

    For PvP, we gave Shamanistic Rage to Elementals to provide a defensive cooldown they could use when focused. We also changed the interaction between Flame Shock and Lava Burst. Lava Burst still does more damage when Flame Shock is present, but it will now do more damage than it did previously, even when Flame Shock isn’t on the target. Therefore, if Flame Shock is dispelled, Elemental does less damage but doesn’t feel completely crippled.

    This same change helped with Elemental’s target switching in PvE, since they didn’t have to wait for Flame Shock to come off cooldown every time they wanted to do something like burst down a new add. We also felt that Elemental never had a great chance to shine in 5.0 raiding. Their damage was on target for most fights, but other specs with whom they were tied would do great in some situations, such as multi-dot fights. We decided that “chains” are one of a Shaman’s core mechanics, so we wanted to make sure Chain Lightning delivered when the player was in a situation where they could use it. Chain Lightning damage no longer decreases when hitting subsequent targets, and actually increases when converted to Lava Beam.

    We wanted to buff Enhancement for PvP in two ways. First, we increased the mana generation of Mental Quickness, since Enhancement suffered from mana problems when they didn’t have high uptime on the target, a common occurrence in PvP. We also lowered the cooldown on Spirit Walk to further increase their up time as well as giving them more frequent escape tools.

    Finally, on the Glyph front, Purge is an extremely powerful tool in PvP, especially when Glyphed, so we added a 6 second cooldown on the ability if the Glyph is applied. It’s still powerful and useful, but less spammable. On the other hand, the Glyph of Flame Shock felt mandatory, so its effects have been made baseline.


    Our main goals for Warlocks:
    • As with all classes, we wanted to tweak talents to make underused talents more appealing.
    • Fix Blood Fear.
    • Put the pet back in Warlock.
    • Roll mandatory-feeling Glyphs into the relevant specs.

    We feel Warlocks are, generally speaking, in a pretty good place right now. Obviously they received many changes in 5.0 and we’re still iterating on a few of those new mechanics to get them to feel quite right. Warlock talents weren’t in a bad place overall. We made a few tweaks such as Burning Rush also offering snare “resistance”, and Kil’jaeden’s Cunning no longer having an active / passive mechanic.
    In PvP we saw that Blood Fear, intended to be used defensively, was increasingly seeing use as an offensive ability. We also felt that it was a bit too effective. To adjust it some, as well as return it to its more defensive roots, the old talent has been removed, and its new replacement, Blood Horror, applies a buff to the Warlock that will Fear enemies that strike her in melee.

    Warlocks are meant to be a pet class, but a lot of locks were choosing Grimoire of Sacrifice. We understand that players have a tendency toward the most powerful and efficient play style, and that managing a pet takes a little effort. Pets are a big part of what it means to be a Warlock though, so while we don’t mind offering GoSac so that there’s some play style diversity, we wanted to de-emphasize petless play. Now sacrificing your fel friend, while still an option, won’t be quite as much of a damage bump as it was in the past. In addition, too many locks felt like they had to use the imp in PvE, especially in smaller groups, in order to benefit from Blood Pact. We just added the Stamina bonus to Dark Intent to let the player choose whether an imp or another demon made more sense depending on their preference and the situation.

    Both Glyph of Embers and Glyph of Soul Shards really felt like they should be baseline, and had become essential to their respective specs. We made the original Glyph effects baseline, and added new Glyph effects that should be helpful, without feeling like they’re absolutely required. We also changed the Glyph of Unstable Affliction so players didn’t feel like they had to choose between the Silence and the damage backlash.

    Blue Posts
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Cross-Realm Destination Realm
    There is a purposeful non-specific determination in who is taken to which realm in order to dissuade large groups of people from intentionally targeting a single realm for nefarious activities. Unfortunately it does have the side effect of impacting some of the good uses for cross-realm play, like inviting a friend to help with something that exists on one realm but not the other. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

    Sunsong Ranch Plowing Change
    It is nice that plowing pops out the vermin with significant damage, but it has two flaws as implemented:

    - You cannot easily gather up multiple vermin if they are in different rows as you could, even if they are close by.

    - It leaves the spot with the vermin in it unplowed, so you have to either plow the whole line again or manually plow that spot. It would be nice if it converted it to plowed after you killed the vermin so it would be consistent with the rest of the plowed row.

    Considering that the plow went over an entire Virmen, uprooting them and all that, a single additional click on the recently disturbed plot of dirt after the commotion is not unexpected.

    When the patch first went life after I killed the vermin that I plowed up it wouldn't even let me till the soil manually or with the plow. Just said "Occupied Soil" over it. Seems to have been fixed now. But it was interesting to say the least.
    There was a hotfix last night that fixed an issue where Occupied Soil would sometimes not update correctly after clearing the associated Squatting Virmen. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

    PvP Weapon Costs
    Would like to know the same for my alts. Currently capped at 4000 with them and not sure whether the 7250 required honor is a bug or intentional. Any insight into this would be greatly appreciated!
    The "Requires earning a total of 7250 Honor Points for the season" is not a bug. In order to purchase the honor weapons you will first need to earn 7250 Honor Points on that particular character. I would recommend that you start buying some items with your current stash of 4000 Honor Points and then continue to farm more till you reach the required 7250 earned for the season. Once you have earned in total 7250 Honor for the season, you can buy the weapon for its listed cost.

    How come there's no 2H mace available with conquest?
    It's actually intended that we have no 2-handed mace for Conquest points available this season. It's quite normal for us not to have every single type of weapon available each season, a good example of this is that this is the first season in a while that we've had a crossbow available for purchase. If your preference is to use a mace as your weapon of choice we can understand your frustration, however the available options this season for 2-handed weapons are either swords or axes. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

    Throne of Thunder Boss Difficulty
    ToT 1st boss is balanced for 502 ilvl.
    I don't think the developers have ever mentioned to which item level a particular boss is balanced. But Jin'rokh has been already killed by guilds with less item level than what you suggest. In fact, most guilds that are at least close to finishing Heart of Fear or beginning Terrace of Endless Spring will probably be able to kill him.

    Horridon, on the other hand, might be a different story... But for those of you with T14 still unfinished, remember 5.0 raids have a reduction of 10% health and 10% damage in place, so you'll probably be able to progress a bit faster and get your group in better shape to further advance on Throne of Thunder. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

    Fan Art Update
    The World of Warcraft Fan Art Section has been updated with new fan artwork.

    Last edited by chaud; 2013-03-08 at 08:07 AM.

  2. #2
    Fatal Strike is a cool idea, if its bugged in any way, though, It will just be a nightmare.

  3. #3
    Data Monster Simca's Avatar
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    Looks like you need to alter back and forth between Anima and Vita (or the boss does, either way) due to the HP gain from Anima and the ridiculous damage from Vita.

    Either way, sounds very... unique.

  4. #4
    A billion HP. Yeesh.

  5. #5
    Elegon already had 1B, this looks suspiciously close to 1.337B >_>

  6. #6
    The reason his health pool looks big is because it is. Elegon had a constant 50% damage increase + a stacking buff that by the end of the fight effectively cut his health in half. Horridon has a stacking buff. And a lot of the bosses in the 1.4billion range have damage multipliers (Sha Aside.)

    Ra-Den looks to be a challenging fight due to the (CURRENT) lack of damage boosts throughout the fight. Its going to be a mechanic driven fight where if you do the mechanics, he will die (Much like Algalon and Sinestra) Im pretty excited to try him out :3

  7. #7
    Interesting mechanics, really good to see

  8. #8
    Legendary! Vargur's Avatar
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    Ra-den sounds frustrated, arrogant and angry. I like, awesome audio.
    Last edited by Vargur; 2013-03-08 at 08:21 AM.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Moshic View Post
    Ra-den sounds frustrated, arrogant and angry.
    You would be, too, after many many years in a tiny room! :P

  10. #10
    Herald of the Titans Marston's Avatar
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    They do indeed sound interesting. Now it would be interesting if some of those abilities come from the construcst or how many of those abilities are missing (if any) from the fight.

  11. #11
    Deleted
    Well, so much for that surprise.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Snore View Post
    Well, so much for that surprise.
    yes it is so terrible that blizzard unshrouds some of his abilities! i am sure the world first guilds are already figuring out strategies at this very moment.

  13. #13
    these band-aids for rogues are getting silly, a larger energy pool from a set bonus to alow for more burst isn't a fix now it feels more like GCD's limit burst in a stun window.
    The class needs rework.

    Prep as an ablity not tallent is nice, and i'm enjoying the cheese that is burst of speed + ST atm.

  14. #14
    I don't find talents in MoP that fun, it's "this talent is better than that", so it's like in vanilla, TBC, WOTLK, Cata where you take the best one, you don't take them because thay are "fun" talents.

    They should have stuck to the TBC talent where you could hybrid yourself by for example going 30 elemental and 30 resto on shaman, that was true choice, MoP, even though some talent are better than others it's still "if you suck very very much at picking talents you will still do well".

  15. #15
    Deleted
    I don't know.. I just see Raiden from Mortal Kombat when I see anything about this boss. I might be way wrong tho.

    He seems to be a real beast!

  16. #16
    Deleted
    Too bad they totally overlooked that Warlock pets are still shit with their 170-180k HP and die in the blink of an eye in 3s.

    Years o pet training in arenas, gosac changed it for a while and now back to square 1.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by malletin View Post
    yes it is so terrible that blizzard unshrouds some of his abilities! i am sure the world first guilds are already figuring out strategies at this very moment.
    Ya I'm sure the people data mining are just skipping them parts no it's not seen till next week.
    "We don't need Blizz to nerf the content. We need it to be less terrible." - Totalbiscuit

  18. #18
    Legendary! MasterHamster's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Salech View Post
    I don't find talents in MoP that fun, it's "this talent is better than that", so it's like in vanilla, TBC, WOTLK, Cata where you take the best one, you don't take them because thay are "fun" talents.

    They should have stuck to the TBC talent where you could hybrid yourself by for example going 30 elemental and 30 resto on shaman, that was true choice, MoP, even though some talent are better than others it's still "if you suck very very much at picking talents you will still do well".
    I am so sick and tired of BC.
    Ya sure, the choices of the BC talent system, broken down to useless and required talents.

    Why is it bad that even when someone is using a talent not optimal for a fight, they can still do good?
    Pro players going to EJ and copying specs and forgetting about it entirely, those were the days!
    Active WoW player Jan 2006 - Aug 2020
    Occasional WoW Classic Andy since.
    Nothing lasts forever, as they say.
    But at least I can casually play Classic and remember when MMORPGs were good.

  19. #19
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Killyox View Post
    Too bad they totally overlooked that Warlock pets are still shit with their 170-180k HP and die in the blink of an eye in 3s.

    Years o pet training in arenas, gosac changed it for a while and now back to square 1.
    You blink for 3 seconds? no wonder your pet dies "in the blink of an eye" ....

  20. #20
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by MasterHamster View Post
    I am so sick and tired of BC.
    Ya sure, the choices of the BC talent system, broken down to useless and required talents.

    Why is it bad that even when someone is using a talent not optimal for a fight, they can still do good?
    Pro players going to EJ and copying specs and forgetting about it entirely, those were the days!
    I agree with BC talents not being a great implementation, but they could have improved the system rather than scrapping it entirely. They kept saying they wanted to make choices matter, but it was usually a choice between a key DPS-boosting talent and a minor PvP utility talent.

    They really should make made the talent trees wider too, especially in Cataclysm when there were whole rows with just a two point and a three point talent on, and you had to spend 5 points to unlock the next row. What kind of design is that?

    This Ra-den looks pretty brutal. I think it may be a couple of months (or a fix) before he dies.

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