Iron Council Hard Mode, Ulduar Loot, Blue posts

[Boubouille]

Iron Council Hard Mode - World First Kill by Deus Vox
Tonight, Deus Vox managed to take down the Iron Council in hard mode (Steelbreaker last). Even if these encounters are supposed to last a few weeks it looks like a lot of them are going down ... maybe the buffed version of Thorim or Freya will be enough to hold back most of the raids. The next reset will probably be very interesting.

Loot
A new item has been discovered : Sapphire Amulet of Renewal (Neck - Spell), check the Iron Council Loot Table for the other items.

Ulduar - Daily Loot Update
Another day, another batch of items discovered in Ulduar!

<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1" style="border: 1px solid #96BC27; margin:auto">
			<tr bgcolor="#96BC27">
			<td width="30">[b]ilvl[/b]</td>
			<td width="75">[b]Type[/b]</td>
			<td width="75">[b]Spec[/b]</td>
			<td width="75">[b]Slot[/b]</td>
			<td width="245">[b]Item[/b]</td>
			<td width="110">[b]Boss[/b]</td>
</tr>
<tr class="loot2"><td>226</td><td>1H Swords</td><td>Melee.DPS</td><td>One-Hand</td><td>[url="/i/news/2009/april/04_18_9767_21.jpg"]Serilas, Blood Blade of Invar One-Arm[/url]</td><td>Freya-10-Hard</td></tr>
<tr class="loot1"><td>219</td><td>Staves</td><td>Spell</td><td>Two-Hand</td><td>[url="/i/news/2009/april/04_18_9767_19.jpg"]Devotion[/url]</td><td>Yogg-Saron-10</td></tr>
<tr class="loot2"><td>226</td><td>Wands</td><td>Spell Hit</td><td>Ranged</td><td>[url="/i/news/2009/april/04_18_9767_17.jpg"]Petrified Ivy Sprig[/url]</td><td>Leviathan-10-Hard</td></tr>
<tr class="loot1"><td>226</td><td>Plate</td><td>Spell</td><td>Hands</td><td>[url="/i/news/2009/april/04_18_9767_14.jpg"][b]<font color="#A335EE">Gauntlets of the Thunder God</font>[/b][/url]</td><td>Thorim-10-Hard</td></tr>
<tr class="loot2"><td>239</td><td>Cloth</td><td>Spell Hit</td><td>Legs</td><td>[url="/i/news/2009/april/04_18_9767_18.jpg"]Leggings of the Enslaved Idol[/url]</td><td>Freya-25-Hard</td></tr>
<tr class="loot1"><td>239</td><td>Neck</td><td>Spell</td><td>Neck</td><td>[url="/i/news/2009/april/04_18_9767_22.jpg"][b]<font color="#A335EE">Sapphire Amulet of Renewal</font>[/b][/url]</td><td>Iron Council-25-Hard</td></tr>
<tr class="loot2"><td>226</td><td>Finger</td><td>Spell MP5</td><td>Finger</td><td>[url="/i/news/2009/april/04_18_9767_13.jpg"][b]<font color="#A335EE">Fire Orchid Signet</font>[/b][/url]</td><td>Freya-10-Hard</td></tr>
<tr class="loot1"><td>226</td><td>Trinket</td><td>DPS</td><td>Trinket</td><td>[url="/i/news/2009/april/04_18_9767_20.jpg"]Vanquished Clutches of Yogg-Saron[/url]</td><td>Yogg-Saron-25</td></tr>
</table>

Blue posts
Not a lot of blue posts during the week-end ... but always better than nothing!

Armor Penetration Rating vs. Cloth
Is this one of those take our comments out of context deals? We didn't want armor pen to be exceptionally good vs. cloth. That is unintuitive and doesn't accomplish the role of the stat anyway, which is to let you do good damage against even highly armored targets. At the same time, we didn't want to let you totally ignore the armor of a boss because that does some bad things such as make the Sunder debuff useless and make your damage too high. As a poster said above, it's in a good place - right where it needs to be. It's not the end-all be-all stat that you should stack at the expense of all other stats. It isn't worth gutting your Strength or hit to maximize. This smells like one of those situations where you just saw "didn't want to be too powerful" and interpreted that through a lens of "Blizzard hates warriors." If you are looking for an answer from the theorycrafters of "Should I ignore ArPen or not?" I don't think you are going to get a simple answer (which is good). (Source)

Armor Penetration Rating bugged?
We did test it and QA said it was working correctly. When we saw several posts on it, the designers checked it again and concluded it was still working correctly. I figured in this case it was going to be pretty tricky for the community to test their own numbers because the calculation was not trivial (though in many cases you got pretty close anyway).

Most of the time when I am asking the community for numbers, it's because they think something is working differently from the way we think it is working. The only way to know for sure is to compare our numbers to their numbers. That doesn't mean we are asking the community to be our QA. We have an excellent and vast QA department. Of course in a game the size and complexity of WoW with the amount of changes we constantly implement, it also doesn't mean they will catch every bug.

Death Knight (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Death Strike hotfix
As several players above demonstrated, Death Strike ignores the third disease if you are Unholy and have a third disease. It does more healing with two diseases up than with one disease or no diseases up. We lowered the healing done quite a bit. It appears to be working correctly.

If Frost and Unholy never Death Strike again, then we might consider a different implementation. Perhaps Death Strike heals similarly for all specs, and Blood just does more damage (but not more healing for that damage).

When there is a contention between quality of life issues and being overpowered, the latter always has to win out. We're not going to let an ability be overpowered for one spec just because nerfing it makes it weak for other specs (especially when the other specs have options to use other abilities or even respec).

Death knights have been at the top of the food chain for a long time. We're not trying to nerf them into oblivion, but if you're used to being an indestructible juggernaut, life might feel a little different for you in 3.1. (Source)

Blood Boil
We made Blood Boil require a target so that it wasn't an attractive button to just hit whenever to generate runic powr. However, we have now come to think that only charging the DK when the ability does damage is inconsistent with other AEs and unfair. We'll try to come up with a solution that doesn't just involve pulling off the runic power generation. (Source)

Priest (3.1 Skills List / 3.1 Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Power Word: Shield
Power Word: Shield is a really useful tool for Disc priests in particular. We want them using it. However, its utility is balanced by a high cost. If we get to the point where they are spamming it constantly to the exclusion of other spells and without it ever being a decision, that suggests mana regen is still too high. (Source)

[Snipgh]

Gratz to Deus Vox

[fr0hzn]

And thats what they call "hard mode" ... :

[Vallos]

The Death Strike nerf was poorly done and I am a bit surprised that they're defending it.

Here's the thought process:

DS hits too hard for Blood. 10k crits aren't what we want on this ability.
So let's nerf it. It'll now do the same damage, but instead only heal a small fraction of what it did before.
Now Blood will still be doing all the damage it did before, but it will receive a smaller portion of healing!

And here are the side effects:

Frost and Unholy have removed DS from their bars.

[Herecius]

Inb4 tons of flaming to say

HOORAY FOR A NEW TENTACLE TRINKET.

[Gyna]

"HOORAY FOR A NEW TENTACLE TRINKET."

Let the tentacle rape commence!

[plusminus]

On 10 man, steelbreaker last was actually easier ;D. (did it 'normal' mode on 25 man)

I suppose 25 man is not much different and you just need a couple of spare tanks and high dps.

[bbr]

"HOORAY FOR A NEW TENTACLE TRINKET."

Let the tentacle rape commence!

Oh that's just sooo wrong.
Bet cru will be one of the first to make use of that idea :P

[VeeVee]

So I guess 10-man doesn't count?

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=50610.0

[stupid11]

So I guess 10-man doesn't count?

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=50610.0

nope.

[Desdimonda]

Inb4 tons of flaming to say

HOORAY FOR A NEW TENTACLE TRINKET.

YES!

Cannot wait to get this.

[Ikkatsu]

So I guess 10-man doesn't count?

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=50610.0

Until we gauge the difficulty (like 10man sarth3d vs 25man sarth3d) then no, 10 man does not count.

[Rilgon]

Inb4 tons of flaming to say

HOORAY FOR A NEW TENTACLE TRINKET.

QFMFT.

And this one's actually viable as a DPS trinket! ;D

Ah, if only I had the other. :|

[Herecius]

QFMFT.

And this one's actually viable as a DPS trinket! ;D

Ah, if only I had the other. :|

For serious. And if that tentacle can say, put out... 300 dps, hell, even 200 dps, all by itself, that's a pretty damn nice increase if it's every two minutes. Moreover, as its crit, anybody that uses crit (in theory), including healers even, could use it without gimping themselves totally, and be able to add that dps to the fight.

[BadTime]

Power Word: Shield
Power Word: Shield is a really useful tool for Disc priests in particular. We want them using it. However, its utility is balanced by a high cost. If we get to the point where they are spamming it constantly to the exclusion of other spells and without it ever being a decision, that suggests mana regen is still too high. (Source)

dear bliz, maybe instead of 2 healing speccs (and forcing healing priest to take both as dual spec), give us 1 proper, like other healing classes got? ahh i forgot, ya got no bloody idea how to design priest. gz.

[fr0hzn]

Can't wait to spot a tentacle in the arena

[Aaron]

Ensidia is getting proper owned with all those other guilds getting the Hard Modes, bet they're shooting themselves in the foot now

[Morganskunk]

I got the 10 man achievement of this bad boy... It sure is not an easy fight! Dam those green aoe!!

[LavaDuck]

*cues Pokemon music*

Steelbreaker, I choose you!

[Jukaï]

*cues Pokemon music*

Steelbreaker, I choose you!

Notice how all the boss abilities are also Pokemon abilities.