WotLK Mounts, Profession dailies, blue posts

[Boubouille]

Wrath of the Lich King Beta Mounts
A few mounts are already available in the Wrath of the Lich King game files, however it's not always easy to link mount spells to the right models. Hopefully, that's something we can do and below you will find a short preview of the mounts you might see in Northrend. (This is only a list of what looks like buyable/permanent mounts, we didn't include all the temporary mounts from quests)

• The Magnificient Flying Carpet ! See Blizzcast Episode 4
• Black Warp Stalker (the model definitely looks fine, but is still tagged as PlaceHolder in the game files, might be because the saddle is missing)
• Winged Steed of the Ebon Blade, the Death Knight flying mount. Please note that another spell named "Swift Skeletal Gryphon" might be used to rewards "old" classes with this mount at some point.
• The Hog - This is supposedly an Engineering mount (the spell isn't flagged as Engineering for the moment). The speed buff is similar to the one used for the Winged Steed of the Ebon Blade and might mean that the mount speed scales with your level.
• Polar Bear - Probably the first Polar Bear mount available in Northrend.
• Frostwyrm - ... Do you really have to ask ? ^^
  

Build 8788 - Jewelcrafting Daily Quests
The latest beta build introduced the first batch of profession daily quests mentionned in Blizzcast Episode 4. 6 new daily quests have been added for Jewelcrafters and require you to craft a few item and drop something from a monster in Northrend.

• Shipment: Blood Jade Amulet - Bring a Vrykul Amulet, a Jagged Dark Jade and a Runed Bloodstone to Timothy Jones in Dalaran. You can find a Vrykul Amulet on any Northrend Vrykul.
• Shipment: Glowing Ivory Figurine - Bring a Shoveltusk Ivory, a Lustrous Chalcedony and a Glowing Shadow Crystal to Timothy Jones in Dalaran. You can find a Shoveltusk Ivory on any Northrend Shoveltusk.
• Shipment: Wicked Sun Brooch - Bring an Iron Dwarf Brooch, a Wicked Huge Citrine and a Rigid Sun Crystal to Timothy Jones in Dalaran. You can find an Iron Dwarf Amulet on any Northrend Iron Dwarf.
• Shipment: Intricate Bone Figurine - Bring Proto Dragon Bone, a Solid Chalcedony and an Intricate Dark Jade to Timothy Jones in Dalaran.
• Shipment: Bright Armor Relic - Bring an Elemental Armor Scrap, a Bright Bloodstone and a Potent Huge Citrine to Timothy Jones in Dalaran.
• Shipment: Shifting Sun Curio - Bring a Scourge Curio, a Quick Sun Crystal and a Shifting Shadow Crystal to Timothy Jones in Dalaran.
  

All 6 quests are available to players but the 5 others won't be available anymore after you picked one. This might be for testing purposes only and we could end up with random daily quests each day.

The quest rewards you with tokens used to buy plans for your profession.

Also, another quest named "Gem Perfection" was added for both Horde and Alliance jewelcrafters. You can get it in Vengeance Landing / Valgarde and will get rewarded with a new skill giving you a chance to cut uncommon quality Northrend gems into perfect gems.

Horde
Gem Perfection - Return two Huge Citrines, two Dark Jade and two Shadow Crystals to Carter Tiffens in Vengeance Landing.
My skills are going to waste in this wretched place. I spent many years learning to cut gems into their perfect form and have nothing to work on! You look like the type who may be able to find me some gems and if you do I can teach you the skill of gem perfection. This will allow you to sometimes cut a perfect gem with increased bonuses when cutting a uncommon quality gem from Northrend.

Alliance
Gem Perfection - Return two Huge Citrines, two Dark Jade and two Shadow Crystals to Ounhulo in Valgarde.
It's has the cold of the Icewyrm's breath up here does it not? Not only do I lack customers for my crafting skills, but I also lack stock of gems to sell! If you can bring me several uncut gems to replenish my stocks, I can teach you the skill of gem perfection. This will allow you to sometimes cut a perfect gem with increased bonuses when cutting a uncommon quality gem from Northrend.

Blue posts

Extra BlizzCon tickets drawing
I can assure you we are very aware that players who are eligible to participate in this drawing want to know as soon as possible whether or not they will be able to purchase tickets so all necessary travel arrangements can be made. That said, there are many components to implementing this drawing, so we're not quite ready to give a date for its launch just yet. What I do know is that, after seeing the complications of the original ticket purchasing process, we're absolutely committed to executing this drawing correctly and as quickly as possible from the top of the company down. We'll be providing plenty of new information about the drawing early next week. Stay tuned! (Source)

Hunter (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8788))
Upcoming Beta Changes
We definitely do want to make traps more usable. We've discussed a lot of different options over the years (including throwing your traps, having them turn into shots etc.) but in the end we feel we'd like to retain the unique gameplay of traps, and improve them without re-designing what traps really are.

Some changes we are working on:

• Distracting Shot will now be a "Mocking Blow"-esque taunt (so it will taunt the mob onto the Hunter for 6 sec). This will allow you to "peel" monsters to you (and thus to a trap) a lot easier than it is now.
• Freezing Trap will no longer break on damage 100% of the time. It will still break on damage, but on x amount. So if the mob has a DoT on them, or the mob gets cleaved while in Freezing Trap, it won't just immediately break. Because of this, we're canning Bear Trap (since Freezing Trap will accomplish what Bear Trap was intended for, plus you guys have enough keybinds as it is). Note that we don't intend Freezing Trap to be a stun, so the tuning on how much damage will break it will be important.
• Camouflage - We'll be introducing this new spell at level 80. It will give you limited stealth capabilities. A bonus with it is that you can lay your traps while Camouflaged and it won't break the stealth, allowing you to setup your traps before a pull if desired.
• Trap Mastery - This talent will be a 1-point talent now, we've condensed a lot of the trap talents in the Survival tree. It will do stuff like increase damage of Immolate, root the dispeller of your Freezing Trap in ice, increase the number of snakes from your snake trap, etc. (Source)
  

Warrior (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8781))
Tanking in Wrath of the Lich King - 5 Man Instances / Thunder Clap
If you have run many of the Northrend dungeons, you'll see that there aren't many of the Shattered Halls style 6-7 mob pulls. And if we add those, they need to be non-elite or otherwise weak enough that they can be AE'd or zerged down without the expectation that the tank has to hold them all for a long time.

Players sometimes ask for Thunder Clap (or fill in your favorite ability) to affect more targets, and in Thunder Clap's case, that is probably a good thing. But really what we'd like to see is these abilities hold the number of targets they are supposed to hold effectively. It's unfortunately typical that when a tank is tanking say 3 targets that the first one dies quickly, the second one is tanked effectively, but somewhere near the end of the fight, the third one breaks free. If Thunder Clap affects 5 or 6 targets, those targets need to be effectively tanked by Thunder Clap (and the rest of the warrior's rotation).

Likewise, we don't want to reduce the cooldown of Thunder Clap to zero. That means a warrior could just that ability to tank and no other. We'd rather see a Thunder Clap, followed by Cleaves, Mortal Strikes, Shield Slams and whatever else, and then another Thunder Clap. To make that work however, the threat of Thunder Clap needs to be high enough to survive the cooldown and I don't think that is happening enough now. (Source)


Death Knight (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8788))
Death Knight unlocking and new servers (A small reminder never hurts)
To my understanding the bottom line is if you have a level 55 character on your account, you can create a Death Knight on any server.

You don't have to have a 55 on the server you want to make your shiny new Death Knight. There are some caveats to this, for example you can't make a Death Knight on a brand new realm. (Wouldn't make much sense for a server of level 10s to have level 55 DKs running amock and stepping on their head, I don't even want to imagine what Hillsbrad would be like....) (Source)

Death Knights retroactive itemization
There is no plan to retroactively itemize Death Knights. The Death Knight specific armor won't start popping up until you reach the icy peaks of Northrend.

Adding the ability for them to use items that currently exist isn't quite the same as retroactively itemizing Death Knight sets. There is no plan, for example, to create a Death Knight set from level 60-70 dungeons such as Valor or Bold, and no plan to create Death Knight class specific raid sets.

In other words, don't hold your breathe for your two man Onyxia kill to put out a Death Knight tier 2 helm. (Source)

Death Knight Glyphs
We have been largely holding off on implementing Sigils for the Death Knight until their abilities and talents are completely finalized. Don't worry though, we will make sure there's a Sigil for all play styles (Source)

Chains of Ice
Chains of Ice is a physical slow with no diminishing returns that cannot be dispelled. Enjoy.

Because the debuff starts at 0% movement speed for a second, it feels a little like a root, but mechanically it is not a root nor a freeze. Apologies to the Frost mages, but I'm not sure it's a great idea to have so much synergy between two classes. That was the sort of thing that lead to warlocks and shadow priests cackling over +Shadow buffs and pushing mages out of raids. (Source)

Hand of Freedom will effect it just like other movement impairing effects, as will pvp trinkets etc. The key difference is that it is no longer considered a Magic effect and thus is not vulnerable to Dispel Magic, Cleanse and the likes,

Bloodworms
We'd like to solve the aggro issues first and then evaluate the spell. We don't want to link it to Death Strike again, because then Death Strike is either weak in the absence of Bloodworms, or OP with it.

With the big death knight revamp, the class plays a lot smoother overall. But some players have a higher tolerance for random events and miss a little of the chaos of the older DK. Bloodworms is the kind of talent that's for players who like to be surprised. (But I don't mean surprised because the maggots go and pull the boss before you're ready.) (Source)

Unholy Aura / Unholy Presence
The only relation they have to presences is that the presence is sometimes redundant with the aura for the death knight himself. Unholy Aura and Unholy Presence both grant a 15% movement speed and these do not stack (with each other or anything). However, a DK in Blood or Frost Presence can still benefit from the movement speed if she has Unholy Aura. A potentially bigger benefit is that 24 other people in your raid also move faster all the time. (Source)

Night of the Dead / Multiple Ghouls
The intent of Night of the Dead is to allow deep Unholy Death Knights the ability to summon their ghoul far more reliably than other specs. However you are only intended to have one ghoul raised at a time, multiple ghouls is a bug. (Source)

Blood vs Frost
Icy Touch -- may very well need to do more damage. It was reduced back in the day when death knights kept saying "Why would I ever use Death Coil?"

Obliterate -- underwent a similar phenomenon. Every DK rotation was built around Obliterate spam. It needs to do more damage than something like Heart Strike.

Hungering Cold -- after experimenting with the scaling costs for a long time, we think they are just awkward and confusing. DRW will probably stay as "uses all your RP" but Hungering Cold and Unholy Blight will probably be a discrete cost of something like 60 RP.

Blood of the North -- the idea of this talent is that you could Blood Strike twice, and then be able to Obliterate or Howling Blast twice the next time around (the aptly named FUFUFU rotation). Walk me through why Plague Strikes turning into Death Runes is helpful -- it's pretty hard to ever skip over spending an Unholy Rune, yes?

Similarly, we would love to work a Death Rune ability into Unholy but can't figure out how to make it work. Unholy doesn't really need more Unholy runes unless the DK wants to spam Plague / Scourge to grind down the cooldowns through Night of the Dead. A clone of Blood of the North might be helpful for the FUFUFU, but then Unholy might play a lot like Frost too.

Dancing Rune Weapon -- we've actually known it's overpowered for some time. We left it that way on purpose because there were still so many threads (misguided we suspect) about how weak it was. Psychology is unfortunately a reality of game testing, and we wanted to make sure people would actually use it. I'm not saying it needs to be nerfed to the ground, but it is probably doing too much damage.

Blood in general -- we're not inclined to do anything to Blood's damage until we have some good numbers about how DKs compare to other classes. One change that is potentially coming down the pike is letting Blood Boil be a more spammable ability, and perhaps letting that replace Pestilence as a good tanking tool. It would give Blood some different spells to work in as well. (Source)

Upcoming beta changes
We'll try and improve RP generation of Frost.

I think Howling Blast could go down to a 10 sec cooldown. That would let you use it once a rotation with Obliterate using the other FU if you turned your two Blood Runes into Death runes. If it has no cooldown, then it might compete a lot with Obliterate.

In the next build, try spamming Blood Boil instead of Pestilence. Use Pestilence to spread diseases to set up Blood Boil.

As everyone has pointed out, Death Rune Mastery was designed to mix up the rotation of Blood and it seems to do that well. Blood of the North was designed to let you mix up Frost, but low Icy Touch damage and a long Howling Blast cooldown seem to be inhibiting that. Obliterate may be too weak now too.

The thing that changes up Unholy's rotation more than anything is Epidemic. You should be able to skip the Icy Touch and Plague Strike the second time around and just wail away with Obliterates, Blood Strikes or the new Blood Boil. Scourge Strike itself does decent damage, but if you use it twice, then you end up with an extra Frost that you can only use for Icy Touch. But if we turned that Frost into a Death Rune for yet another Scourge Strike, then you'd lose Frost Fever (unless Scourge Strike itself applied Frost Fever too, but then you'd totally waste Icy Touch). It's tricky. (Source)

[Balduvian]

Camo is back! Distracting shot and Freezing Trap change seems cool.

Also WTB that Polar Bear Mount!

[Syrda]

Acording to Wowhead, "perfect" uncommon gems will have two additional stat points on them. So instead of giving +6 Strength and +6 Critical Strike Rating (regular uncommon gem), a perfect gem will have +7 Strength and +7 Critical Strike Rating.

Sounds like a nice change to me, I wonder if there will be upgrades for that skill availiable for having it proc on Rare or even Epic gems as well.


PS: Yay for Blizzard noticing the little TC issue

[anakoluthon]

Death Knight Glyphs
We have been largely holding off on implementing Sigils for the Death Knight until their abilities and talents are completely finalized. Don't worry though, we will make sure there's a Sigil for all play styles (Source)

Sigils are relics, not glyphs.

Although i imagine the same statement applies to glyphs as well.

[Adrenalas]

So psyched about the daily profession quests. Glad i dropped skinning for BS now. My war has BS and enchanting now.

I'm glad they got rid of the 6-7 elite pulls in 5 mans...that completely made warriors uselss to tank that as well as make them unwanted as dps due to no cc. Thunderclap just needed a threat bonus and i think with it scaling on ap and with higher crit dueto incite it will be great now.

[El_Vaughn]

lol @ stealth for hunters

[Ammonium]

The Forstwyrm is badass.

[Balduvian]

Btw, is this Camo usable in combat or not? So is it much like Vanish(can be used in combat) or just Stealth(which can't be used in combat)? I can imagine it's usable in combat, but at the same time that seems OP ( <-- Np for me tho! )

[Jeffemming]

Btw, is this Camo usable in combat or not? So is it much like Vanish(can be used in combat) or just Stealth(which can't be used in combat)? I can imagine it's usable in combat, but at the same time that seems OP ( <-- Np for me tho! )

I'm sure it will only be usable outside of combat, and really I wonder why you would want to use it in combat anyway? Hopefully Camo will just make you less likely to be detected by mobs and have no PvP implications. I'm supposing Blizzard's intention with this skill is to create an easy way for Hunter's to get close for traps, and leave it at that. While that's pretty one-dimensional insofar as a skill, I don't see the point of giving Hunters a real stealth. People moaned and groaned about Night Elf Hunters being able to Shadowmeld->Aimed Shot, and they weren't even able to move during it.

[Balduvian]

Why would you want it in combat? Well for PvP use that would be great. You can use it for running, going behind a pillar and bandage or getting healed to full while stealthed. That would be why

[Arilea]

Death Knight Glyphs
We have been largely holding off on implementing Sigils for the Death Knight until their abilities and talents are completely finalized. Don't worry though, we will make sure there's a Sigil for all play styles (Source)

Sigil's are not Glyphs. Sigil's are the Death Knight's Relic, much like a Druid's Idol, Shaman Totem or Paladin Libram. You know, the whole range slot thing.
Source: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=39208

[Jeffemming]

Why would you want it in combat? Well for PvP use that would be great. You can use it for running, going behind a pillar and bandage or getting healed to full while stealthed. That would be why

Right, but I'm hoping it won't have any real use in PvP :P. Also, without any sort of Cloak or Hunger for Blood type ability good luck staying in camo. Plus, Feign Death.

[Karpalo]

ahahahahaha that bears face

[kittynipples]

I'm glad they got rid of the 6-7 elite pulls in 5 mans...that completely made warriors uselss to tank that as well as make them unwanted as dps due to no cc. Thunderclap just needed a threat bonus and i think with it scaling on ap and with higher crit dueto incite it will be great now.

It only mattered because dps you normally find in pugs are fairly close to being complete morons. I've never had any problem at all tanking heroic SH on my warrior with guild members who know what the hell they are doing. It's actually sad to see that the game has to be further dumbed down because the player base is made up of idiots.

[Jukaï]

Any other Jewelcrafter on the Beta been able to obtain the 'world drop' items required for the profession dailey quests ?

I tried farming Shoveltusk Ivory and Iron Dwarf Brooch, but neither seems to drop of the respectable mobs in either Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord. Having the quest labelled as a level 80 quests, though, could indicate that you actually need to farm mobs of these types in higher levels, but they aren't there yet.

[Roshar]

The polar bear mount is from the Blizzcon 2008 goodie bag.

[Mordax]

The polar bear mount is from the Blizzcon 2008 goodie bag.

not true, the blizzcon one has a murloc sitting on his back with a flag, this is a regular mount that probably everyone will be able to get

[Yaminho]

• Camouflage - We'll be introducing this new spell at level 80. It will give you limited stealth capabilities. A bonus with it is that you can lay your traps while Camouflaged and it won't break the stealth, allowing you to setup your traps before a pull if desired.

This is the second day that Hunter changes make my day ^^ Gieef WotLK

[Arael]

Why would you want it in combat? Well for PvP use that would be great. You can use it for running, going behind a pillar and bandage or getting healed to full while stealthed. That would be why

The original camo that was data mined from alpha could be used in combat and it allso removed all debuffs on you but acording blue post bit over a week ago
" Used to be the 51-pt Survival, but we felt it was too PvP oriented, and we're really trying to flesh the tree out to be more than traps and melee (we are not done, as you can tell).

That said... Camouflage may just come back as a base ability... *maybe* =] (Though a bit different from the against-the-rules data mining version you saw)"

[Marvdatboi]

Wow hunters are getting some real love to bad I signed a life contract to my Mage :-\.