Alchemy Cataclysm, Blue Posts, Comics

[Boubouille]

Alchemy in Cataclysm
It's time for another profession preview, and Alchemy is a very interesting one because of all the love the profession got in Cataclysm!

Flying Mount
You know you want it! The super awesome Vial of the Sands will transform you into a dragon, and allow you to carry an ally on your back!

	Name	Description
	Vial of the Sands	Transforms you into a Sandstone Drake, allowing you to fly very fast and carry an ally on your back.

Alchemist Stone
The epic Alchemist Stone is back and Mastery rating makes your life considerably easier, no matter what your class is, you will probably want that trinket!

	Name	Description
	Lifebound Alchemist Stone	Creates Lifebound Alchemist Stone.

Flasks
Flasks are fairly simple in Cataclysm, your only choice is a +300 stat boost in one stat and the addition of Cauldron of Battle and Big Cauldron of Battle will make your life even more easier in raids.

	Name	Description
	Flask of Steelskin	Increases Stamina by 300 for 1 hour. Counts as both a Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.
	Flask of the Draconic Mind	Increases Intellect by 300 for 1 hour. Counts as both a Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.
	Flask of the Winds	Increases Agility by 300 for 1 hour. Counts as both a Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.
	Flask of Titanic Strength	Increases Strength by 300 for 1 hour. Counts as both a Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.
	Flask of Flowing Water	Increases Spirit by 300 for 1 hour. Counts as both a Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.
	Flask of Enhancement	Increases your Agility, Strength, or Intellect by 80 for 1 hour. Your highest stat is always chosen. Counts as both a Battle and Guardian elixir. Effect persists through death.
	Cauldron of Battle	Creates a cauldron that raid members can use to gain the benefit of a flask appropriate to their class and talents. Cauldron has 7 uses and lasts for 5 min.
	Big Cauldron of Battle	Creates a cauldron that raid members can use to gain the benefit of a flask appropriate to their class and talents. Cauldron has 17 uses and lasts for 5 min.

Transmutations
A few interesting changes were made to Transmutations in Cataclysm.

• There's only one type of Meta Gem now, and it's now created with Uncommon quality gems.
• You can create Rare gems by crafting herbs + Uncommon gems.
• Volatile Life can be randomly transmuted into any other kind of Volatile element.

	Name	Description
	Transmute: Living Elements	Transforms the essence of life into another element. The exact result is not known ahead of time.
	Transmute: Shadowspirit Diamond	Transmute several lesser gems into a beautiful shadowspirit diamond.
	Transmute: Truegold	Transmutes pyrium bars into truegold.
	Transmute: Pyrium Bar	Transmutes elementium and volatile earth into a pyrium bar.
	Transmute: Inferno Ruby	Transmutes lesser red gems and the essence of the heartblossom to create an inferno ruby.
	Transmute: Ocean Sapphire	Transmutes lesser blue gems and the oils from Azshara's Veil to create an ocean sapphire.
	Transmute: Amberjewel	Transmutes lesser yellow gems and the timeless essense of whiptail to create an amberjewel.
	Transmute: Demonseye	Transmutes lesser purple gems and the magical essense of twilight jasmine to create a demonseye.
	Transmute: Ember Topaz	Transmutes lesser orange gems and the fiery essense of cinderbloom to create an ember topaz.
	Transmute: Dream Emerald	Transmutes lesser green gems and the electrical currents of stormvine to create a dream emerald.

Potions
The regular stats, healing, and mana potions are here but you also get a couple of fun/utility potions that you might be able to sell for a good price.

• The Potion of Treasure Finding will sometimes reward you with an extra Tiny Treasure Chest when you loot a monster, the chest contains 3-5 Gold, has a 75% chance to contain 8-15 Embersilk Cloth, and a 15% chance to contain a Volatile element.

	Name	Description
	Potion of Treasure Finding	Allows you to sometimes find extra treasure from monsters in Mount Hyjal, Vash'jir, Deepholm, Twilight Highlands and Uldum. Lasts 1 hour. Effect persists through death.
	Potion of Illusion	Transforms the imbiber to look like someone else.
	Deathblood Venom	Fills your veins with deadly poison, causing you to sometimes poison enemies that strike you in melee for 1900 to 2100 damage over 8 sec.
	Potion of Deepholm	Teleports the imbiber to Deephome.
	Ghost Elixir	Increases Spirit by 225 for 1 hour. Battle Elixir.
	Elixir of the Naga	Increases expertise rating by 225 for 1 hour. Battle Elixir.
	Elixir of the Cobra	Increases critical strike rating by 225 for 1 hour. Battle Elixir.
	Elixir of Mighty Speed	Increases haste rating by 225 for 1 hour. Battle Elixir.
	Elixir of Impossible Accuracy	Increases your hit rating by 225 for 1 hour. Battle Elixir.
	Elixir of the Master	Increases your mastery rating by 225 for 1 hour. Battle Elixir.
	Elixir of Deep Earth	Increases armor by 900 for 1 hour. Guardian Elixir.
	Prismatic Elixir	Increases resistance to magic by 90 for 1 hour. Guardian Elixir.
	Volcanic Potion	Increases spell power by 1200 for 25 sec.
	Potion of the Tol'vir	Increases your Agility by 1200 for 25 sec.
	Golemblood Potion	Increases your Strength by 1200 for 25 sec.
	Earthen Potion	Increases armor by 4800 for 25 sec.
	Potion of Concentration	Puts the imbiber in an elevated state of concentration where they can restore up to 22000 mana over 10 sec, but they are defenseless until their concentration is broken.
	Mysterious Potion	Restores 1 to 15000 health and 1 to 15000 mana.
	Mythical Healing Potion	Restores 7500 to 12500 health.
	Mythical Mana Potion	Restores 9250 to 10750 mana.
	Mighty Rejuvenation Potion	Restores 7200 to 8800 mana and health.
	Deepstone Oil	May cause stiffness.

The Elemental Invasion

After the appearance of Twilight's Hammer agents in Orgrimmar and Stormwind City, Azeroth's defenders swiftly thwarted the cult's bid to destroy the two capitals. Yet these victories have done little to soothe fears over Azeroth's calamitous state. Earthquakes continue shaking the world with greater frequency than ever before. Wayward fire spirits have engulfed Orgrimmar, threatening to reduce the proud Horde capital to ash. Across the Great Sea, a sudden influx of earth spirits has rocked the foundations of Ironforge, pushing the once-indomitable dwarven bastion to the brink of collapse.

Even so, a glimmer of hope has come in the form of ancient tablets recovered in Northrend. These mysterious artifacts are believed to hold clues concerning Azeroth's tormented elementals -- a claim that can only be validated once the artifacts are delivered safely from the northern continent. The gifted shaman Thrall has also begun his own efforts to shed light on the disasters befalling the world. Of great concern, however, is whether anything will be left of Orgrimmar and Ironforge by the time answers are found....

The events leading up to Cataclysm are underway, and the disturbances will only become more severe as the weeks pass. Pay close attention to your faction leaders, Thrall and Varian, and be on the lookout for unfamiliar faces gathering on the city streets. This one-time-only series of events features all-new quests and multiple stages of dire happenings, so stay vigilant!

Blue Posts

Optimized Talent Builds
You are missing the point of that quote. It is not "players shouldn't have choices," as many of you are inferring. It's that "there should be more thought on the part of the designers for how various abilities are supposed to be used and those roles should be more apparent to players."

There has never really been a time in the game when you could just do whatever you wanted with your class and be equally effective. Then, as now, smart players doing a lot of homework would figure out the most optimized way to play. You can choose to follow their recommendations, try to find an even more optimized way to play, or just do your own thing because that's more enjoyable for you, knowing that you may pay the price of being less optimized.

[...] That was my point in my post above though. That sense of exploration and discovery you are missing wasn't lost as a result of anything we did. You could make an excellent or terrible talent tree before and you can still do so now. What changed is that the community became a lot more sophisticated, which isn't that surprising in a game that's 6-years old now. These days there are numerous fansites, simulators, videos, mods and other tools, all created by the community, to optimize your gameplay. There have always been some, but there are more today, they are more sophisticated, and more players know about them. (Source)

"Creative use of game mechanics
I don't disagree with that. We don't like to reflexively stomp out on creative use of game mechanics just because they were unexpected. (This is particularly true of encounters, where we will generally just accept if players come up with strategies we didn't anticipate, so long as they don't trivialize the intended challenge.)

It comes down to whether we think the playstyle violates what we are trying to do with the class.

Imagine there was a rogue build that centered around only using Deadly Throw and Fan of Knives to make an effective ranged dps class. Imagine this rotation was generally accepted to do 5% more dps than the traditional melee rogue. That's the kind of thing we would likely break. That's not because we're mean jerks. It's because we think the game might break down: rogue itemization would be in a weird place, encounters might not work with so many characters at range, most importantly those players who enjoy playing rogues because of the iconic lightly-armored melee fighter are now encouraged to play something completely different that they might not enjoy.

There are no hard and fast rules on this sort of thing. It's all judgement calls on the part of the designers. (Source)

Rotations complexity
I agree with that too. We set out to make the Feral and Protection paladin rotations more complex in Cataclysm. I know that some of you feel that isn't the case, but we'll just have to agree to disagree about that. Both specs now have some opportunities to screw up, which in turn makes players who pull off the rotation with finesse better tanks and worthy of the accolades they receive, rather than just being lucky that they picked the right class. (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Diseaseless Blood
In the case of "diseaseless Blood," we don't have a problem if tanks choose to sacrifice some of their threat generation for a simpler rotation or other benefits. It doesn't bother us unless ignoring diseases becomes the only reasonable way to play (and with Outbreak available in Cataclysm, applying diseases is even easier). When dps specs were ignoring diseases, we made changes, because the whole DK rotation was based on applying diseases. That's true to a much lesser extent for tanks, but we try to have pretty simple rotation for tanks anyway because they have a lot of other things to worry about and are often having to deal with very dynamic situations compared to what a PvE dps DK might be doing. (Source)

Comics
Dark Legacy Comic #263 and Teh Gladiators #182 + #183 are out!

[Earthfury]

that drake sure do look awesome

[Ralth]

News

[Upptagen]

Does this mean the actual Invasion has started?

Also, that drake is just... oh myh gad! o_O

[Imhullu]

I like the teleport potion, and am curious about the treasure finding one.
I <3 being an alchemist.

[Muraza]

I like how blizzard does not even care that DKs can tank without diseases, it should be more focused on like the other specs, what the hell.

[Poysonivy]

Yes me like drakey. DLC <3.

(oe first page)

[Radak]

I think Iam going to love that treasure finding potion.
It will be the new way to gold farming. Just take 1 potion and kill as much mobs as possible. You should be able to kill atleast 1mob per minute.
So that's 240g, 517 embersilk and 9 volitile elements.
Seems like a good deal to me especially is you are a tailor.

[kpts44]

Does anyone know if an upgraded version of the "endless healing potion" still exist? The mysterious potion migh be the only replacement...

[Chimpyman]

do you need to be an alchemist to use the drake? or can u make it like the engi chopper and trade it?

[Téuntjûh]

Does anyone know if you can use that Alchemy drake if you drop alchemy after you learned it?

[kpts44]

I think Iam going to love that treasure finding potion.
It will be the new way to gold farming. Just take 1 potion and kill as much mobs as possible. You should be able to kill atleast 1mob per minute.
So that's 240g, 517 embersilk and 9 volitile elements.
Seems like a good deal to me especially is you are a tailor.

I'm not sure about this, but I remember reading somewhere that the effect wears off as soon as you loot one such chest.

[Ursl]

Carried by <insert your name here>

[Direfen]

do you need to be an alchemist to use the drake? or can u make it like the engi chopper and trade it?

Bind on Pickup without an Alchemy requirement (at the moment) so I assume anyone can use it, but you have to be an Alchemist in the first place in order to make it.

[bethofwow]

Gasp, not dire happenings!!

[Auxis]

Don't mean to be rude, but that Drake isn't really a dragon, so people can't go "RAWR! I IS A DRAGON!". Stone Drakes are earth elementals altering their form to suit their location. So by rights, a shaman can go "RAWR! I IS EARTH ELEMENTAL!", which isn't really much of a difference from seeing people talking about them being dragons.

OT: As for Alchemy. Me thinks I'll be getting it on my druid. Looks fun . Like that Treasure Finding potion.

[Demoncrash]

Any reason why the Cauldrons give 7 and 17 instead of 10 and 25? Why screw over a few people in the raid?

Either reduce the mats and make it give 5 and 13 or increase them so it accommodates the full size of 10 and 25 man raids.

[Gantra]

Don't mean to be rude, but that Drake isn't really a dragon, so people can't go "RAWR! I IS A DRAGON!". Stone Drakes are earth elementals altering their form to suit their location. So by rights, a shaman can go "RAWR! I IS EARTH ELEMENTAL!", which isn't really much of a difference from seeing people talking about them being dragons.

OT: As for Alchemy. Me thinks I'll be getting it on my druid. Looks fun . Like that Treasure Finding potion.

Who cares? It looks cool.

[therodet]

So, since the alch "mount" is actually a transformation, much like the druid flight form, is it also instant-cast, and can you gather herbs while in form?

[Mousa]

I just wanna go farm everything so I can brew them all