Build of the Month
Recent Blue Posts
Limited PvP -> PvE Free Character Transfers
The Cataclysm Classic Pre-Expansion Patch Arrives April 30
Recent Forum Posts
An Update on This Year’s BlizzCon and Blizzard’s 2024 Live Events
Blizzard added the Realm First! feats of strength to the game in the latest Cataclysm beta build.
- Realm First! Nefarian - First guild on the realm to defeat Nefarian in Blackwing Descent on Heroic difficulty while in a guild group.
- Realm First! Al'Akir - First guild on the realm to defeat Al'Akir in the Throne of the Four Winds on Heroic difficulty while in a guild group.
- Realm First! Sinestra - First guild on the realm to defeat Sinestra in the Bastion of Twilight on Heroic difficulty while in a guild group.
Today, Mumper answered revealed something very interesting on the official forums: the Realm First! achievements can be obtained in both 10 and 25-Man raids. So far, these achievements do not have any specific reward.
Vial of the Sands - Alchemy Mount?
A new spell appeared in the latest beta build, the Vial of the Sands. According to the spell and reagents it looks like it will be an alchemy recipe available through Discoveries, the Vial of the Sands isn't a regular mount and will let you transform into a Sandstone Drake and carry an ally on your back!
- Vial of the Sands - Teaches you how to transform into a dragon, allowing you to fly very fast and carry an ally on your back.
Pre-Cataclysm World Event on PTRs
The 3rd part of the event is now available on PTRs, Doomsayers are in capital cities and a new questline is available to infiltrate the Twilight's Cult.
Twilight's Cult - Horde / Alliance Questline
Quest - Prophecies of Doom / Prophecies of Doom
Objective - Listen to a speech given by a Doomsayer in the Drag and obtain copies of the pamphlets "Elemental Fire for the Soul", "What Does 'The End of All Things' Mean for Me?", and "Finding Security and Comfort in a Doomed World".
Description
Harbingers of doom are nothing new on the streets of Orgrimmar, but I'm worried about this latest batch. These people are organized and they've attracted a lot of attention in the Drag, where they seem to congregate. I've thought about rounding them up or otherwise disrupting their activities, but that will just drive them underground. We need to find out more about them. Would you go to the Drag, listen to what these doomsayers are spreading, and gather any literature you can find about their ideas?
Quest - Signs of the Times / Signs of the Times
Objective - Setup 5 Warning Posters around the Valley of Strength, the Drag, or the Valley of Honor.
Description
We've got to do something to reduce interest in this doomsday cult, but I'm hesitant to take much action until we know more about who is behind this group. I've had my men place markers around heavily traveled areas in Orgrimmar. Take these posters and set them up where you see the markers. They won't discourage the most determined of seekers, but it's a first step in exposing this cult. The Horde has enough to deal with as it is, without people wilfully spreading lies too.
Quest - Infiltrating the Cult / Infiltrating the Cult
Objective - Speak to a Doomsayer Orgrimmar's Drag to join the cult, then put on your Recruit's Robe.
Description
The streets of Orgrimmar are wild with rumors about the cult's origins and practices. There's only one way to know the truth about this group,
Quest - Spreading the Word / Spreading the Word
Objective - While wearing your Doomsday Message, visit the East Zeppelin Tower, the West Zeppelin Tower, and the town square of Razor Hill.
Description
Welcome to the farm,
Quest - The Master's Plan / The Master's Plan
Objective - Learn more about the cult's plans at the altar in the eastern part of the Jaggedswine Farm.
Description
You're fitting in well here,
Quest - The Doomsday Plan / The Doomsday Plan
Objective - Take the Elemental Devices to Blood Guard Torek in Orgrimmar's Valley of Strength.
Description
The first batch of elemental devices are ready. Your task will be to conceal them inside the city of Orgrimmar. The devices will unleash their fire elementals at the proper time. Don't worry,
Quest - Thwarting Twilight's Hammer / Thwarting Twilight's Hammer
Objective - Break Elemental Devices to release their elementals. You must defeat 5 Raging Fire Elementals.
Description
You can't have been the only person sent into Orgrimmar to deploy those devices containing fire elementals. We have to find and disable the rest of the devices before set their captive elementals free and burn down the city. Are you familiar enough with the devices to destroy them? You need to break them open before the fire elementals inside have had time to reach full strength. They should be easy to defeat if you open the devices early. The cultists have probably put them all over the city.
Quest - Warn King Wrynn / Warn the Warchief
Objective - Speak with Thrall at Grommash Hold in Orgrimmar's Valley of Wisdom.
Description
You have successfully defended Orgrimmar from the threat posed by this Twilight's Hammer cult,
Brewfest is Here
If you're wondering why I didn't news about it earlier, there is your answer.
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
I’m sorry to say that, at present, there is no new Brewfest Stein for this year, nor is there planned to be. 
Sincere apologies for any annoyance this may cause you, but hopefully some will be pleased by the ability to catch up on something missed out year. (Source)
[...] There may be nothing new for characters who have achieved everything in the previous year, but let's not generalize for the entire player base. (Source)
Sincere apologies for any annoyance this may cause you, but hopefully some will be pleased by the ability to catch up on something missed out year. (Source)
[...] There may be nothing new for characters who have achieved everything in the previous year, but let's not generalize for the entire player base. (Source)
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Guild Reputation Leveling
You are currently only earning guild rep from questing. Based on this, your rep gain speed will be slow since you are missing out on the other two ways to earn it. (rated BG's and boss kills) We just activated guild xp on dungeons so you should see the rate increase from that. You will see another increase once rated BG's are active. Guild achievements will not affect guild rep since the xp that you earn goes directly to the guild and not the players.
We are watching the rep gain rate both internally and on the beta and we will tune as necessary right up to launch. Guild rep gain is scaled based on the amount of time we think a player should need to invest in a guild to earn the rewards and contribute. It's not something that you can just "grind out" like a normal world faction. (Source)
Tol Barad
Leaving Tol Barad
Portals that lead back to Stormwind and Orgrimmar will be present in the next build. These portals can be found on the peninsula island at your respective faction camps. We will also open a portal for the winning team at the raid entrance to Baradin Hold. (Source)
Tunnel System
Those 3 micro dungeons will be closed off during the main battle. Anyone in them will be kicked out. They are there to support daily questing in the zone between battles. (Source)
Tol Barad daily dungeon quests
Many of the features in Tol Barad have been a work in progress over the past few weeks. Our next push should be in a much more polished state and ready for testing. Thank you for all the reports, this info is extremely useful as we move along in development.
A few things to note:
--One of the three micro dungeons is chosen at random after each Tol Barad battle. This comes along with its accompanying quests. This is 100% random.
--These quests are ONLY available for the winners of the game and must be completed in the 2.5hrs before the next game starts.
--A total of 6 quests unlock for the winner of each game. 3 take place in one of the randomly chosen micros and the other 3 take place out on the island.
Hope that helps clear things up. (Source)
Reputation leveling
The rep vendors for both Baradin's Wardens and Hellscream's Reach will be fully available in the next build. We had a few hiccups in this last push.
Reputation for these Tol Barad factions can be earned from doing the daily quests, winning a tol barad battle, defeating the raid boss in Baradin Hold or by purchasing commendations from the rep vendors. (Source)
Respawns
The defenders respawn in the center of the island (Baradin Hold), and the attackers respawn at the graveyard nearest the node. So, in a straight fight where both sides are killing at the same effectiveness the defenders should eventually lose. So presumably, if you're fighting a losing battle as defense your better option is to try to re-secure one of the other points. (Source)
Classes
20% Melee/Ranged Haste
Is it just me or does this buff seem too good? In Cataclysm, haste is your main stat when it comes to increasing your resource generation. If you're in a raid group that does not have this buff, it greatly hinders your DPS.
It's not just you. (Source)
Tank damage on PTRs
The damage being done by Lich King-level mobs is currently higher than intended on the PTR. That's not a good surrogate for what tank healing will be like at 85 in appropriate gear. (Source)
Healing
Deep Healing Mastery
We like the shaman version. The druid one is problematic for a couple of reasons. Conceptually, a hot is often the last thing you think of putting on someone who is grievously wounded. Second, at the moment the bonus is only calculated on the initial application and not the ticks. If we can fix that problem, then the druid mastery would be better. It's also possible we'll just redesign it. (Source)
Druid (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
New Restoration Mastery
New Resto druid mastery: Increases the potency of your heals on targets upon which you have a hot.
It benefits both hots and direct heals equally while still supporting Resto being a healer that cares a lot about hots. It encourages layering different spells while disincentivizing Rejuv blanketing.
Examples:
1) You cast Regrowth on someone who has a Rejuv = bonus healing.
2) You cast Nourish on someone who has a Lifebloom = bonus healing.
3) You Swiftmend a Rejuv = bonus healing.
4) You cast a Rejuv on someone who does not have a Regrowth, LB or WG on them = no bonus healing.
5) You cast Rejuv on someone who has a Rejuv = no bonus healing. (You merely refreshed Rejuv.)
6) You cast a Wild Growth = bonus healing on those with preexisting hots.
C). Rejuv, then LBx3. Rejuv falls off, and LBx3 is refreshed by Nourish. Will the LB ticks retain the mastery benefit?
Yes. There was a hot on the target, so Nourish benefits (from the mastery in addition to Nourish just working that way).
If someone gets low and they don't have a HoT on them already, are you really going to want to put on a HoT, THEN a heal? Probably not.
My impression is that some of you are going from the extreme of "Rejuv everyone in the raid" to "Rejuv nobody but the tank." The reality will probably be somewhere in the middle. Some targets will have hots on them and some won't. The more hots you can keep up, the better off you'll be, but you'll have to balance that against the mana cost of doing so. I don't think it's as simple as "always do X." (Source)
Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Holy Paladins
We like the change to Daybreak. Read some more posts from fellow paladins if it doesn't make sense to you.
We're not assuming Conviction is up 100% of the time. Procs that are supposed to be up all the time are usually better designed as passives (unless ramp up time is a concern for some reason).
Light of Dawn now heals the paladin as well. We will be very surprised if we see many paladins skip the talent.
Let's keep the QQ under control. If you're so frustrated that our vision of the paladin doesn't align with yours or if you're blinded by rage that we can't see how much weaker you are than other healers, than you're better off just not posting. If you keep posting in this manner you'll just get banned anyway so the effect will be the same. (Source)
Priest (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Shadow Mastery Scaling
It's easy to increase the bonus per mastery point for Shadow if crit ends up being a far better stat. It's a little trickier to get Shadow (or any dot class) to devalue haste. (Source)
Use of Power Word: Shield as Discipline
We don't want Disc just bubbling everyone all the time. That strategy is too effective on live given how simple (and arguably boring) it is. Disc should use a lot PW:Shield a lot more than Holy, but that doesn't mean it should solve every problem for you.
I'm not seeing the massive throughput differences between Disc and Holy, even on the EJ post you're referencing. (Source)
Rogue (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Rogue concerns
Passive damage -- While the combat log says that you are doing a lot of auto attacking, it's not telling you the full story. A lot of what rogues have to manage (say SnD and Envenom) then boost your autoattacks or poison damage. If we changed SnD to instead be a separate dot for the same overall damage, all of a sudden your combat logs would show less "passive" damage. As long as good rogues can do better damage than bad rogues, we think it's fine.
Combat's mastery -- The big missing piece of the puzzle was that Main Guache was supposed to proc Combat Potency. Without that (which it now has), it is pretty lackluster.
20% melee / ranged haste buff -- This is something we're evaluating. It's a really serious buff for rogues and warriors particularly, to the extent that your dps drops significantly without it. This suggests we need to nerf the buff (in the same way we changed e.g. Curse of Elements from 13% to 8%) and buff affected classes to compensate. We just don't want the swing to be that big when you don't have it.
Mana reducing talents -- We just disagree that rogues are singled out here, though if you see some dps classes that can spend all of their points on dps and skip anything utiltiy related, please bring them up so we can evaluate them. It's always possible that the community (correctly or incorrectly) perceives a talent we intended to be optional utility as mandatory dps. (Source)
[...] Mana reducing talents = the OP was concerned about talents like Deadened Nerves that for PvE really translate into reducing the mana healers spend on heals. Apologies if I short-handed too much.
We want dps classes to consider these useful talents rather than just dismissing survival as the healers' jobs while they go into dps tunnel vision mode. The OP was expressing the concern that rogues had too many of these talents relative to other classes. I responded that I didn't think that was the case but players are welcome to point out other dps trees that don't match. (Source)
Warrior (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Heroic Strike / Inner Rage
As we have said several times now, there are zero players outside of these halls doing Cataclysm raids yet, and the high level PvP is just starting to get there. If we were certain warriors would never, ever get into a state where they couldn't spend rage fast enough with Heroic Strike alone, then Inner Rage might be a lot less important. We're just not convinced that is the case yet, nor do we think any amount of theorycrafting can prove that is the case without actual first-hand experience.
If normalization and the new HS model have fixed the problem forever, then awesome. It's just too early to know that. (Source)
AE Damage / Blood and Thunder
You shouldn't be dependent on Blood and Thunder to generate enough AE damage. It's there mostly for those cases where you can't always keep reapplying an AE ability but want to keep threat. In other words, a warrior who skips the talent shouldn't feel like they can't AE tank at all. You shouldn't feel like you have to open with Rend every AE pull. A more typical scenario would be on a fight where you know you're going to be AE tanking for a long time, you use Rend after your initial Thunder Clap or Shockwave. (Likewise, Thunder Clap buffing Shockwave shouldn't mean you never, ever touch Shockwave until the buff is applied.)
Thunder Clap's damage may just be too low.
We'll discuss pulling the GCD cost from Inner Rage. (Source)
You are currently only earning guild rep from questing. Based on this, your rep gain speed will be slow since you are missing out on the other two ways to earn it. (rated BG's and boss kills) We just activated guild xp on dungeons so you should see the rate increase from that. You will see another increase once rated BG's are active. Guild achievements will not affect guild rep since the xp that you earn goes directly to the guild and not the players.
We are watching the rep gain rate both internally and on the beta and we will tune as necessary right up to launch. Guild rep gain is scaled based on the amount of time we think a player should need to invest in a guild to earn the rewards and contribute. It's not something that you can just "grind out" like a normal world faction. (Source)
Tol Barad
Leaving Tol Barad
Portals that lead back to Stormwind and Orgrimmar will be present in the next build. These portals can be found on the peninsula island at your respective faction camps. We will also open a portal for the winning team at the raid entrance to Baradin Hold. (Source)
Tunnel System
Those 3 micro dungeons will be closed off during the main battle. Anyone in them will be kicked out. They are there to support daily questing in the zone between battles. (Source)
Tol Barad daily dungeon quests
Many of the features in Tol Barad have been a work in progress over the past few weeks. Our next push should be in a much more polished state and ready for testing. Thank you for all the reports, this info is extremely useful as we move along in development.
A few things to note:
--One of the three micro dungeons is chosen at random after each Tol Barad battle. This comes along with its accompanying quests. This is 100% random.
--These quests are ONLY available for the winners of the game and must be completed in the 2.5hrs before the next game starts.
--A total of 6 quests unlock for the winner of each game. 3 take place in one of the randomly chosen micros and the other 3 take place out on the island.
Hope that helps clear things up. (Source)
Reputation leveling
The rep vendors for both Baradin's Wardens and Hellscream's Reach will be fully available in the next build. We had a few hiccups in this last push.
Reputation for these Tol Barad factions can be earned from doing the daily quests, winning a tol barad battle, defeating the raid boss in Baradin Hold or by purchasing commendations from the rep vendors. (Source)
Respawns
The defenders respawn in the center of the island (Baradin Hold), and the attackers respawn at the graveyard nearest the node. So, in a straight fight where both sides are killing at the same effectiveness the defenders should eventually lose. So presumably, if you're fighting a losing battle as defense your better option is to try to re-secure one of the other points. (Source)
Classes
20% Melee/Ranged Haste
Is it just me or does this buff seem too good? In Cataclysm, haste is your main stat when it comes to increasing your resource generation. If you're in a raid group that does not have this buff, it greatly hinders your DPS.
It's not just you. (Source)
Tank damage on PTRs
The damage being done by Lich King-level mobs is currently higher than intended on the PTR. That's not a good surrogate for what tank healing will be like at 85 in appropriate gear. (Source)
Healing
Deep Healing Mastery
We like the shaman version. The druid one is problematic for a couple of reasons. Conceptually, a hot is often the last thing you think of putting on someone who is grievously wounded. Second, at the moment the bonus is only calculated on the initial application and not the ticks. If we can fix that problem, then the druid mastery would be better. It's also possible we'll just redesign it. (Source)
Druid (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)New Restoration Mastery
New Resto druid mastery: Increases the potency of your heals on targets upon which you have a hot.
It benefits both hots and direct heals equally while still supporting Resto being a healer that cares a lot about hots. It encourages layering different spells while disincentivizing Rejuv blanketing.
Examples:
1) You cast Regrowth on someone who has a Rejuv = bonus healing.
2) You cast Nourish on someone who has a Lifebloom = bonus healing.
3) You Swiftmend a Rejuv = bonus healing.
4) You cast a Rejuv on someone who does not have a Regrowth, LB or WG on them = no bonus healing.
5) You cast Rejuv on someone who has a Rejuv = no bonus healing. (You merely refreshed Rejuv.)
6) You cast a Wild Growth = bonus healing on those with preexisting hots.
C). Rejuv, then LBx3. Rejuv falls off, and LBx3 is refreshed by Nourish. Will the LB ticks retain the mastery benefit?
Yes. There was a hot on the target, so Nourish benefits (from the mastery in addition to Nourish just working that way).
If someone gets low and they don't have a HoT on them already, are you really going to want to put on a HoT, THEN a heal? Probably not.
My impression is that some of you are going from the extreme of "Rejuv everyone in the raid" to "Rejuv nobody but the tank." The reality will probably be somewhere in the middle. Some targets will have hots on them and some won't. The more hots you can keep up, the better off you'll be, but you'll have to balance that against the mana cost of doing so. I don't think it's as simple as "always do X." (Source)
Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)Holy Paladins
We like the change to Daybreak. Read some more posts from fellow paladins if it doesn't make sense to you.
We're not assuming Conviction is up 100% of the time. Procs that are supposed to be up all the time are usually better designed as passives (unless ramp up time is a concern for some reason).
Light of Dawn now heals the paladin as well. We will be very surprised if we see many paladins skip the talent.
Let's keep the QQ under control. If you're so frustrated that our vision of the paladin doesn't align with yours or if you're blinded by rage that we can't see how much weaker you are than other healers, than you're better off just not posting. If you keep posting in this manner you'll just get banned anyway so the effect will be the same. (Source)
Priest (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)Shadow Mastery Scaling
It's easy to increase the bonus per mastery point for Shadow if crit ends up being a far better stat. It's a little trickier to get Shadow (or any dot class) to devalue haste. (Source)
Use of Power Word: Shield as Discipline
We don't want Disc just bubbling everyone all the time. That strategy is too effective on live given how simple (and arguably boring) it is. Disc should use a lot PW:Shield a lot more than Holy, but that doesn't mean it should solve every problem for you.
I'm not seeing the massive throughput differences between Disc and Holy, even on the EJ post you're referencing. (Source)
Rogue (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)Rogue concerns
Passive damage -- While the combat log says that you are doing a lot of auto attacking, it's not telling you the full story. A lot of what rogues have to manage (say SnD and Envenom) then boost your autoattacks or poison damage. If we changed SnD to instead be a separate dot for the same overall damage, all of a sudden your combat logs would show less "passive" damage. As long as good rogues can do better damage than bad rogues, we think it's fine.
Combat's mastery -- The big missing piece of the puzzle was that Main Guache was supposed to proc Combat Potency. Without that (which it now has), it is pretty lackluster.
20% melee / ranged haste buff -- This is something we're evaluating. It's a really serious buff for rogues and warriors particularly, to the extent that your dps drops significantly without it. This suggests we need to nerf the buff (in the same way we changed e.g. Curse of Elements from 13% to 8%) and buff affected classes to compensate. We just don't want the swing to be that big when you don't have it.
Mana reducing talents -- We just disagree that rogues are singled out here, though if you see some dps classes that can spend all of their points on dps and skip anything utiltiy related, please bring them up so we can evaluate them. It's always possible that the community (correctly or incorrectly) perceives a talent we intended to be optional utility as mandatory dps. (Source)
[...] Mana reducing talents = the OP was concerned about talents like Deadened Nerves that for PvE really translate into reducing the mana healers spend on heals. Apologies if I short-handed too much.
We want dps classes to consider these useful talents rather than just dismissing survival as the healers' jobs while they go into dps tunnel vision mode. The OP was expressing the concern that rogues had too many of these talents relative to other classes. I responded that I didn't think that was the case but players are welcome to point out other dps trees that don't match. (Source)
Warrior (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)Heroic Strike / Inner Rage
As we have said several times now, there are zero players outside of these halls doing Cataclysm raids yet, and the high level PvP is just starting to get there. If we were certain warriors would never, ever get into a state where they couldn't spend rage fast enough with Heroic Strike alone, then Inner Rage might be a lot less important. We're just not convinced that is the case yet, nor do we think any amount of theorycrafting can prove that is the case without actual first-hand experience.
If normalization and the new HS model have fixed the problem forever, then awesome. It's just too early to know that. (Source)
AE Damage / Blood and Thunder
You shouldn't be dependent on Blood and Thunder to generate enough AE damage. It's there mostly for those cases where you can't always keep reapplying an AE ability but want to keep threat. In other words, a warrior who skips the talent shouldn't feel like they can't AE tank at all. You shouldn't feel like you have to open with Rend every AE pull. A more typical scenario would be on a fight where you know you're going to be AE tanking for a long time, you use Rend after your initial Thunder Clap or Shockwave. (Likewise, Thunder Clap buffing Shockwave shouldn't mean you never, ever touch Shockwave until the buff is applied.)
Thunder Clap's damage may just be too low.
We'll discuss pulling the GCD cost from Inner Rage. (Source)
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