Azeroth United, 3.3 Notes Update, Blue posts

[Boubouille]

Azeroth is Uniting to Support Child’s Play!
A few days ago I received a mail from Stompalina of Rawrcast about the 1st annual Azeroth United. Don't forget that every dollar count, you can easily donate by using the ChipIn widget below. (Payments are made through Paypal. A Paypal account isn't required you can just click "Continue" below the "Don't have a PayPal account?" question at the bottom left of the page)

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"We officially kicked off our inaugural charity event today, and the response has been amazing! In support of the event, Child's Play featured Azeroth United on their events page (http://www.childsplaycharity.org/events.php), and we are garnering support from WoW-related big-names like Alex Albrect, Scott Johnson and Veronica Belmont. And, all of this response is to bring light to Child's Play Charity, and their amazing efforts to aid those that need to smile the most - patients in Children's Hospitals around the world.

Together, we developed Hearts, Hands, and Voices to give light not only to Child's Play, but also to foster a sense of community among the millions of World of Warcraft players who are active within the social networking internet media community. Anyone who is part of the MMO community is encouraged to donate their voice, and by doing so we are seeing that our reach extends far beyond our home realm.

For more details about how players can give their voice, as well as the amazing gift baskets being donated by sponsors, visit [Link removed temporarily, their hoster didn't like the sudden burst of traffic, see this post].

One (1) Hands Giveaway - As a “Thank You” for your $20 donation to Child’s Play will enter you into an EXCLUSIVE Helping Hands Giveaway where one lucky winner will receive prizes from these sponsors…

• Rawrcast: World of Warcraft Podcast - 60-day World of Warcraft Game Card
• Sideshow and Syrana – 30-day World of Warcraft Game Card and 2009 Blizzcon Authenticator
• Unbearably Hot – Custom, one of a kind, handmade bracelet themed after the Hearts, Hands, and Voices charity event. Sure to be a Blizzcon conversation starter!
• 3point.com: Warcraft Stein - Artwork by amazing World of Warcraft illustrator James Zhang.
• Raid Warning Podcast: Steel Series World of Warcraft Gaming Mouse
• SwagDog: 3ea. $100 Gift Certificates and Weekly 25% Off Codes for all contributors. You can get your code from your favorite Azeroth United Unity Member.
• J!NX Clothing Company - $25 Gift Card, Talking Murloc Plush Toy, and J!NX Keychain

Ten (10) Hearts Giveaways - As a “Thank You” for your $10 donation to Child’s Play, you will be entered into the Filled Hearts Giveaway where TEN lucky contributors will WIN a gift basket filled with donations from these sponsors…

• Curse Networks – Get your hands on one of these great items: mouse pad, USB flash card that are super slim and fit in your wallet they are the size of a business card! OR a Premium Curse Subscription for 12 months
• Azeroth United – Snag one of many assorted WoW TCG Loot Cards
• Geek Girl Diva of Entertainment Earth: $25 Gift Certificate
• J!NX Clothing Company - $10 Gift Card and J!NX Keychain

Together, we are aiming to make Hearts, Hands, and Voices the biggest charity event that Azeroth has ever seen!"


Patch 3.3 PTR Notes - 11/10 Update
The Patch 3.3 PTR notes have been updated once again.

• Druids: Gift of the Earthmother note clarified
• Paladins: Sanctified Light (changed reverted based on update to Lay on Hands)
• Rogues: Murder
• Items: Glyph of Victory Rush note corrected

Druid
Restoration

• Gift of the Earthmother: Redesigned. This talent now increases spell haste by 2/4/6/8/10% and reduces the base global cooldown of Lifebloom by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of its previous effects.

Paladin

• Sanctified Light: This talent now also has a 33/66/100% chance to prevent Lay on Hands from causing Forbearance when Lay on Hands is used on others.

Rogue
Assassination

• Murder: This talent now provides a flat damage increase of 2/4% against all targets, instead of only targets which do not appear in Icecrown.

Warrior

• Glyph of Victory Rush: This glyph now increases the critical strike chance of Victory Rush by 30%, regardless of the percentage of the target’s remaining health.

Reminder: WoW Battle.net Conversion Coming
If you didn't convert your WoW account to a Battle.net one, you probably can't play WoW anymore at this point. Visit the American Battle.net or the European Battle.net websites to do it now!

A few months ago, we unveiled the Battle.net account, our new way for players to log in to World of Warcraft and future Blizzard games, sign up for upcoming beta tests, shop the online Blizzard Store, and more with just one username and password. This was just the first step in the rollout of the brand-new Battle.net; in the future, players will be able to use Battle.net to participate in cross-realm chat in World of Warcraft, create real-life friends lists, communicate across different games, and a whole lot more.

In preparation for the launch of these new features, on November 11, 2009, all current World of Warcraft players will be required to merge their World of Warcraft accounts with a Battle.net account in order to log in to the game. As our way to say “thanks” for taking a moment to go through the process, existing World of Warcraft accounts that upgrade to Battle.net (including those that have already switched over) will receive a brand-new penguin in-game pet. Starting on November 11, all World of Warcraft players will need to log in to the game using a Battle.net username and password, and anyone who wishes to create a new World of Warcraft account will need to start with a Battle.net account.

Creating a Battle.net account is simple and free. To merge your existing account with a Battle.net account, visit http://us.battle.net . For more info, check out the Battle.net site or read the FAQ: http://us.battle.net/faq/index.html

Account conversion: http://us.battle.net
FAQ: http://us.battle.net/faq/index.html

Blue posts

Random Dungeons and Heroic Lockout
It's not that you don't get saved to a Heroic dungeon when using the Random Option in the tool; rather, the Random Option will ignore your Heroic lockouts if you continue to use it, though it will attempt to weight the chance of being randomly selected for a Heroic dungeon to which you've been saved lower than those to which you have not, provided there are enough people in the queue to fill a group for an alternate instance without making you wait an excessive amount of time for a dungeon you have yet to do. (Source)

5-Man Dungeons Loot Quality
We tend to provide better loot for forward progression, not the other way around. So you'll see better loot in the three Icecrown Citadel five-player wings (which will include the chance to embark upon the epic quest line to obtain Quel'Delar) given that the dungeon is tuned for higher gear levels than Oculus, just as you see better loot in Trial of the Champion than existing Wrath of the Lich King dungeons today. I'd prefer it if you didn't call it an act of laziness either, as there are plenty of new items with unique art being added in the 3.3 content update.

In any event, given that Oculus will award Emblems of Triumph in patch 3.3, two Emblems of Frost if it's your first Heroic dungeon of the day run via the Random Dungeon option in the Dungeon system, and two additional Emblems of Triumph if you complete the Heroic dungeon via the Random Dungeon option each time after that, you're technically provided access to better rewards -- and a faster accumulation of emblems -- than you are today. (Source)

Oculus difficulty
It's funny. Last week several community managers, developers, encounter designers, and quality assurance folk logged in to the test realms to try out the Dungeon tool by playing in pick-up groups with players via the Random Dungeon option. One of the encounter designers was hit with Oculus first. In jest, we all had a good laugh at the choice provided him for his first go. No one left the group and they cleared it in a flash, I believe getting the 20-minute achievement as well. This was before creatures and bosses were tuned down a bit, and vehicle gear-scaling improved on the test realms.

It's anecdotal to be sure, but players certainly didn't shy away from enjoying the time running the dungeon with a Blizzard employee; and they had little trouble clearing it. It's one of the faster dungeons in Wrath if done right. Maybe we should implement a system where, every time Oculus is selected for you in the Dungeon tool, a Blizzard employee is put in your group.

[...] This might not fully address your question, but part of the reason the changes were made to Oculus was due to the fact that players were shying away from that dungeon while testing the Dungeon system more often than they were from other dungeons. This is the type of data we're watching on the test realms, particularly when features such as this come along.

Are the test realm players a typical sample audience? Perhaps not. But in the grand scheme of our World of Warcraft player base, I wouldn't even say those regularly running Heroic dungeons are a good sample audience. This is a large game and people enjoy many different aspects of it, some more so than others. (Source)

Vault of Archavon Difficulty
The vault bosses are designed and meant to be very puggable so pretty much anybody can do them (within reason of course). The problem this brings about is what gear they can drop. If we put tokens on them then they are guaranteed loot for everybody in a very easy way - when gear is this easy to get we generally wouldn't want it to be as good. By making it so it's basically a lottery on what drops/what you get we feel we can put some top notch gear on the bosses and it doesn't cause any big issues. (Source)

Rogue
Weapon Swapping
Let me put it this way....

Fine: A rogue changes targets so needs to swap weapons to get a different poison on that target. This is more of a strategic thing -- something you only do a few times per fight.

Not fine: A rogue swaps weapons constantly on the same target in order to get lots of poisons on that target. This is more of a hassle, not an interesting decision the player is making. This is more in line with a caster switching weapons to maximize a proc and then swapping back. It's not fun and it feels like you have to do this annoying and unintuitive (unless you read the forums a lot) trick to maximize your dps.

Now like someone said above, you could make a weapon swapping mod for say Feral druids and few people would feel the need to use it. It's not the existence of a mod that's a problem. Mods do lots of crazy things. It's a problem if it feels mandatory to raiding rogues. That however is a very subjective call and one that's ultimately up to us to make. We're keeping an eye on it. (Source)

The solution is very easy (conceptually) - when Deadly Poison procs and a 5-stack is on the target, cause your other hand's poison to proc. This effectively replicates the effect of weapon swapping, works for all specs, and slightly buffs rogue PVE DPS beyond where it's at right now - something which rogues are in dire need of, looking at the parses coming out of 3.3 so far. Additionally, it ensures that raiding rogues will use Deadly Poison, as Blizzard has worked so hard to make it attractive to us.

We've heard that suggestion a few times and it might be something we explore. We'd certainly rather make swapping not necessary rather than just be mean and prevent it.

Some of you are posting that rogues will use anything that maximizes their dps and this maximizes their dps. That's not really the point.

Our original comment on swapping was that it appeared to provide a marginal dps increase and we knew that some rogues who tried it weren't happy with how it worked because the risk was high of screwing something up. So while it theoretically maximized dps, it was risky enough and the gain low enough that we weren't sure it would become mainstream.

Now things are trending that the dps increase is significant and Adrine's mod is written so well that it takes a lot of the risk away, even in PvP. That weights things more towards doing something about it, though judging from Adrine's posts, I don't think he'll mind. (Source)

Rogues aren't getting nerfed
Agreed. We're not interested in nerfing rogues here, just making an annoying mechanic less attractive. (Source)

Warlock
Soulshatter hit chance
As far as we know, Soulshatter always hits. It isn't tied to any other talent, such as Suppression. It would still hit if you had zero +hit on your gear. This was changed at some point after LK launched. (Source)

Fel Armor healing threat
Fel Armor causes no healing threat in 3.3. This was a relatively recent change though. (Source)

[Naomi_90a]

It's a PARTY in the USA!

Miley Cyrus I love you!

x

[BigDave]

Anyone else think using your e-mail address as your WoW log in is more of a securtiy risk?

/edit ie this is what you have to do for your battle.net account.

[Deleted]

hit chance on soulshatter Oo

[LavaDuck]

Anyone else think using your e-mail address as your WoW log in is more of a securtiy risk?

/edit ie this is what you have to do for your battle.net account.

Buy authenticator then.

[F-Minus]

Oculus didn't need a nerf or that it's hard at all, it's just the most annoying instance in the game ever thanks to the end boss, where you don't rely on you own class skills but rather to the skills of your drake, same goes for Malygos & Flame Leviathan. And considering Oculus, being a priest, I just jump down from my drake to the platform and heal with my priest as opposed to the drake as I'm more efficient that way by a large margin even if I manage to die there, I still did 10 times more healing as on that gimped drake.

I wish Blizzard would stop designing raid bosses where the use of "vehicles" is mandatory, not that it's hard, it's just annoying and boring.

[TheDrifter2k]

OH MY GOD!!
Blizzard is giving to charity!?! This is an outrage! I am offended! They have so much money those greedy capitalist bastards and now they're pretending to care by giving a few measely dollars to some charity that I've never heard of and is probably a big lie. GOD I HATE BLIZZARD. *renews subscription*


/sarcasm


It sounded just the same with the Panda. You people make me sick.

[Zanardam]

Rogue
Assassination

•Murder: This talent now provides a flat damage increase of 2/4% against all targets, instead of only targets which do not appear in Icecrown.

At last, a wise decision.

Now its time that Blizzard give some fresh air to the Cold Blood talent too.

[Amgyn]

Occulus now gives emblems of triumph and frost... wow, when people cry amazing things happen.

[Fyssas]

Occulus now gives emblems of triumph and frost... wow, when people cry amazing things happen.

Oculus is how it is spelt, both in Warcraft and the real world.

[Wyspr]

Rogue
Assassination

•Murder: This talent now provides a flat damage increase of 2/4% against all targets, instead of only targets which do not appear in Icecrown.

At last, a wise decision.

Now its time that Blizzard give some fresh air to the Cold Blood talent too.

Agreed. Murder as it is, is just too limiting. I mean as Rogues we are trying to murder everything in site including the undead, wooh!

[loftus]

OH MY GOD!!
Blizzard is giving to charity!?! This is an outrage! I am offended! They have so much money those greedy capitalist bastards and now they're pretending to care by giving a few measely dollars to some charity that I've never heard of and is probably a big lie. GOD I HATE BLIZZARD. *renews subscription*


/sarcasm


It sounded just the same with the Panda. You people make me sick.

who are you talking to?

i agree with F-minus too.

lots of people are complaining about the oculus nerf, saying its too easy blah blah.

like you said vehicle combat is totally irrelavant of your character, so it forces alot of players into doing something they dont like.

im happy to see the fact gear scales more now. If nothing else it will make it less painful than before.

its annoying in raids, but i find it a bit different there.

If its your first time as a paticular vehicle, the raid leader can usually point the person in the right direction and explain what to do.

in a 5 man heroic pug, its quite rare there is any talking at all, its much more difficult for people who havent used a paticular vehicle to learn their role.

Also, im fed up of all this 'blizzard gives in to players' crap.

its a game, they are meant to make it enjoyable for their playerbase.

If 80% of people complain about a certain thing and say they dont enjoy it, it is a good thing when its changed.

[Sauredfangs]

Although this is great, i bet blizzard is doing all this to clean up wow's "geeks with no life" reputation.

[TheDrifter2k]

who are you talking to?

All the people that bitched about the recent Vanity pet sale and its ties to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. They (the bitchers) really made asshats of themselves.

[Vondammung]

Bornakk's bit; "The vault bosses are designed and meant to be very puggable so pretty much anybody can do them"

Tokens from VoA? Screw that. The real problem, which is Blizzard's own doing, is that VoA is currently horribly designed. Consider yourself as a fresh 80. You run some HC Dungeons and you've got yourself some dandy gear. Now, you think, I'd like to try on Archie and get myself some Tier loot! Problem arises: None of the current PuG groups want to take you because they all go for Koralon first. Imagine getting inside nonetheless and surviving the constant crap-talking about your DPS (in the case of a DPS, of course) only to find out that the raid kills Koralon and then everyone leaves because Archie and Emalon don't drop anything useful anymore. Yea. Think about that. Now you're stuck with an impossibility for most newer 80s. My question is, why did Blizzard not make VoA a 3, 4 or 5 door place? Select your foe-type-thing. That way you could find a PuG aiming to kill Archie only, for example.

Anyhoo, just wanted to say this because I am tired of people spamming trade/general/LFG with "link your achievement" when all you want is some sweet iLevel 200/213 loot from Archie.

[Fyssas]

Bornakk's bit; "The vault bosses are designed and meant to be very puggable so pretty much anybody can do them"

Tokens from VoA? Screw that. The real problem, which is Blizzard's own doing, is that VoA is currently horribly designed. Consider yourself as a fresh 80. You run some HC Dungeons and you've got yourself some dandy gear. Now, you think, I'd like to try on Archie and get myself some Tier loot! Problem arises: None of the current PuG groups want to take you because they all go for Koralon first. Imagine getting inside nonetheless and surviving the constant crap-talking about your DPS (in the case of a DPS, of course) only to find out that the raid kills Koralon and then everyone leaves because Archie and Emalon don't drop anything useful anymore. Yea. Think about that. Now you're stuck with an impossibility for most newer 80s. My question is, why did Blizzard not make VoA a 3, 4 or 5 door place? Select your foe-type-thing. That way you could find a PuG aiming to kill Archie only, for example.

Anyhoo, just wanted to say this because I am tired of people spamming trade/general/LFG with "link your achievement" when all you want is some sweet iLevel 200/213 loot from Archie.

Every PuG I've been with always kills all 3, so I don't know if your realm just sucks or that my realm (actually Draenor EU now as my friend xferred me from Silvermoon EU <.<, but it applies to both) just tends to PuG better.

[Javanface]

Every PuG I've been with always kills all 3, so I don't know if your realm just sucks or that my realm (actually Draenor EU now as my friend xferred me from Silvermoon EU <.<, but it applies to both) just tends to PuG better.

Regardless of that, fresh 80's are prevented from going to VoA until they outgear Archavon and quite possibly Emalon as well atm. Not a good design choice in my opinion. And bring on the "but gear is so easy to get anyway why do you need voa?" qq. I'm in the process of leveling and gearing my third character. I found it annoying on my second, and I'm surely going to find this very annoying on this warrior.

All that aside tho, Murder change ftw! hope it sticks, it has been a bit annoying to have a talent that only works on one out of twenty bosses (obvious exaggeration).
I also like where they're going with the weapon swapping. Especially the "you won't be nerfed, just changed to discourage this behavior" bit. I'm a very happy rogue today.

[pinkduck]

Holy HTTP content delivery accelerator going crazy. Use Squid. It's better... Anyway.

I don't envy the people who waited until today to convert to battle.net. Everything's going to be clogged up.

[Eyetotem]

I would encourage everyone that can to donate to the Azeroth United cause. Stompalina has been working hard with others to get this thing going and it is a very worthy cause.

As a member of <Bound> and a fan of Rawrcast, I would like to thank Boubouille for posting this on the Main Page. I am excited to see all of the World of Warcraft community behind this cause.

[Amgyn]

VoA on my server (magtheridon-us) is pretty retarded too... gear check to ensure you overgear the encounter, then after 1 boss is down, they ignore the other two....


i think i will have to lead my own raid the next time i plan to do this