Mogu'shan Palace and Shado-pan Monastery Preview, Arena Pass, Blue Posts, Comics

Last week the 2012 World of Warcraft Arena Pass kicked off with the Practice Phase, but it is almost time to really get your game on! Only one week remains in the practice phase, so get in now to brush up on your skills before the Ladder Phase launches on May 8.

If you’d like to know more about the phases of the Arena Pass, read about it here.


To learn more about the Arena Pass, visit the Arena Pass information page, or check out the FAQ. GL HF!

Entering/Testing the new instances
Not being able to zone into the Shado-pan Monastery after you die will be fixed in a newer build. =/

As for Mogu'shan Palace, since the normal entrance is in Vale of Eternal Blossoms (which is closed for beta testing) there's an NPC in Dawnblossom that can port you there or you can use LFG. You also end up in Dawnblossom when you die, and the same NPC can port you back as a ghost. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mogu'shan Palace Dungeon Flow
Yep, we know we need to improve the dungeon flow after the first dungeon event so it's more obvious that you're not supposed to kill the 8251043 Mogu and there are stairs to take. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Monk (Forums)
Upcoming Mistweaver Changes (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

• We're still planning on adding a Mistweaver "chi dump," hopefully within the next two builds. It will probably cost 3 Chi, and interact with Soothing Mists somehow.
• We're going to be diminishing the interaction between Uplift and Renewing Mists. The gameplay at the high-end becomes nothing but keeping all of your Renewing Mists refreshed on as many targets as possible, in spite of everything else. We found ourselves using Surging Mist just to gain Chi for Uplift, to keep Renewing Mists rolling on a 10-man raid, which was overpowered, but definitely wasn't fun if we missed that refresh. Our current plan is to cause Uplift to only extend the duration of your Renewing Mists by a 6 seconds or so, rather than refreshing it completely.
• We're probably going to be moving Chi Wave out of the Mistweaver spec, and put it as a talent choice with Zen Sphere and Chi Burst, then balance those as interesting choices for all Monks.
• We're going to be adding spirit to expertise conversion to the stance as well.
• We may re-design how the statue works, removing the on-click effect as it steps on Lightwell's toes a bit.

Upcoming Brewmaster Changes (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

• We've been doing a slight rework of some of the Brewmaster's mechanics. In an upcoming build all attacks done to the Brewmaster will be staggered, and we're adding UI to show you the "level" of your stagger (high, medium or low), so that you can know when you should use Purifying Brew. This design will give you the choice of clearing your stagger stack with Purifying Brew, or continue to push damage into your Stagger stack using Blackout Kick.
• We're going to attach the Brewmaster to Parry more. Parry will passively cause a counterattack effect causing damage, and using Blackout Kick will now cause your Stagger % (as in, the amount of damage being staggered) and Parry % to increase.
• We still need to give the Brewmaster better defense against magic. This will either be a passive damage reduction or some rework of an ability.
• We're going to make defensive cooldowns all "Chi-free", including the talents.
• We're going to change Spinning Crane Kick to not cost Chi, but Energy/Mana over time.
• We will do a polish pass on the interrupt (Spear hand strike) and snare (Disable). That said, Disable is a bit superfluous for the Brewmaster because of Dizzying Haze.

Brewmaster Energy Regeneration
In an upcoming build, we're boosting the passive regeneration rate for Brewmasters in the stance. We reduced the energy rate because it was too much for Windwalkers (since they gain 2 Chi from Jab). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Keg Smash Bug
I noticed that Keg Smash doesn't have a range assigned to it, therefore I pretty much have to be inside the mob for it to be "In range" instead of melee range
This is indeed a bug. The range is not intended to be that short. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Chi Burst
The balance on these spells is not yet complete. We intend for Chi Burst to be worth the cast time for all 3 specs. The spell effects for Chi Burst should also be in the next build. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Paladin (Forums)
Sanctity of Battle "change"
Many of our tooltips have conditional clauses that are apparently difficult to data mine. Thus we see a lot of "changes" reported that aren't changes at all.

In this case, we added a couple of spells to Sanctity of Battle, that then made the tooltip hard to read because it was just a random list of spells. So we made the tooltip conditional for each spec to only list spells and abilities relevant to them. Holy doesn't see Hammer of the Righteous for Sanctity of Battle because they don't have that ability.

I point all this out just to say that you shouldn't jump to conclusions when you read data-mined patch notes. Verify how the mechanic actually works in beta before heading for the forums. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warlock (Forums)
Affliction UI on Beta
The UI for Affliction has been missing completely in recent beta builds and the UI for Destruction has not been updating correctly. These should both be fixed in a future build. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)