World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Azeroth is a large world and it's recently become much larger. There are hills to climb, deserts to explore, fjords to ford, and a vast sea separating the continents. And let’s not forget that beyond Azeroth proper there lies a whole other shattered world -- Outland. Traveling has never been more interesting, and for some, confusing. To help you with getting around, we’ve compiled a list of some of the more common ways you can see the world, meet new creatures, and (likely) be killed by them.

Mounts
Mounts come in all shapes and sizes, and each race has its own type of mount that becomes available at level 20. You’ll need to learn how to ride, of course, and then you'll need to keep your feet on the ground until level 60 when you can take to the skies -- after purchasing the flying skill and a flying mount.


*Tip - Hitchhiking: Some mounts are designed to carry more than one person, so you can always try to catch a ride with a friend.

Flight Masters
For a little pocket change, you can get a lift from a Flight Master. You’ll need to find the flight paths (as indicated by the green exclamation (!) point) and learn the route before you can fly to many destinations, but they should be easy to find as you explore. It’s important to note that there are flight paths that can be used by Alliance only, Horde only, and by both. These are noted on your map as red for Horde, blue for Alliance, and gold for Neutral (both factions can use.)

Boats
Boats are free to use, and while the crew may look like they have loyalties to the Horde or Alliance (depending on the harbor they make their home), they will never attack their passengers. The residents of the harbor, however, may have other things in mind. Most boats dock in Alliance ports and can be an inconvenient means of transport for the Horde, though Booty Bay in the Eastern Kingdoms runs a neutral port.

Zeppelins
These flying contraptions may look like floating death traps, but they use the best in goblin technology... so yes, they'e probably death traps. You can’t beat free airfare, though, which is surprising given the goblins' greedy nature. Much like the boats, zeppelins are faction-neutral, but perhaps more difficult to use for the Alliance.

Portals
Portals are magical constructs that allow travel from one location to another.

Mage Portals: They may cost you -- either because the mage is charging a fee or you’re generously leaving a tip. These portals are created by a mage and allow party members to travel through them. When traveling alone, mages can teleport themselves without opening a portal.

NPC Portals: NPCs can sometimes help you get where you need to go, though their transportation methods are generally attached to a quest or progression path.

Static Portals: Many portals offer travel to a fixed destination. These can be found in a variety of locations.

Orgrimmar

• The Western Earthshrine - Offers portals to Hyjal, Vashj’ir, Deepholm, Uldum, and Twilight Highlands after you've completed the quests that guide you to these new Cataclysm zones.
• Tol Barad - Found near the Western Earthshrine, you must be level 85 to enter this world PvP zone.
• Blasted Lands - Found in the Valley of Spirits, you must be level 58 to use this portal. It delivers you safely to an outpost just outside The Dark Portal.

Stormwind

• Blasted Lands - Found in the Wizard’s Sanctum, you must be level 58 to use this portal. It delivers you safely to an outpost just outside The Dark Portal.
• The Eastern Earthshrine - Offers portals to Hyjal, Vashj’ir, Deepholm, Uldum, and Twilight Highlands after you've completed the quests that guide you to these new Cataclysm zones.
• Tol Barad- Found near the Eastern Earthshrine, you must be level 85 to enter this world PvP zone.

Outland Portals

• The Stair of Destiny: Offers portals to Orgrimmar and Stormwind on either side of the Dark Portal.

Neutral Portals

• Shattrath: Within the Terrace of Light, a portal transports those of the appropriate level to the Isle of Quel'Danas.
• Dalaran: Within the Violet Citadel, a portal is available for travelers heading to the Caverns of Time to defend Azeroth’s timeline from the machinations of the Infinite Dragonflight.
• Within the Sunreaver’s Sanctuary (Horde) and the Silver Enclave (Alliance), portals are available for Wintergrasp, Strand of the Ancients, Warsong Gulch, Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm, and Isle of Conquest. (Note that queuing for Battlegrounds can be done anywhere from within the User Interface.)

Summoning
When there’s no portal available, you can ask your friends for a helping hand. Players can be summoned by using a meeting stone outside of a dungeon (level requirements need to be met) or by utilizing the services of a warlock.

Special
Many additional means of transportation around the world become accessible via quests, special items, or NPCs, but there are two specialized methods that we just couldn’t leave out.

• Rocketway Exchange: The goblins have arrived, and with them, a little extra goblin ingenuity. You can find the largest of these Rocketways in Azshara.
• Deeprun Tram: Running between Ironforge and Stormwind, players can take this underground train for free and easy transit between the two cities.

We've recently made a change in an effort to promote continued play in Rated Battlegrounds. Now when a player is at their weekly Conquest cap they will receive the full amount of Honor from kills, objective completions, victories and losses while in a Rated Battleground match. Those not at their cap will continue to earn Conquest normally, and will only earn Honor once they reach their weekly cap.

Whether you’re capped and others on your team aren’t, or you’re all capped and just want to keep playing, we hope this change will allow more flexibility for those participating in Rated Battlegrounds.

Fortified citadels lay in ruins. Ancient forests burn brightly in the light of the setting sun. Arid stretches of desert, once known to claim even the most hearty of travelers, now house fertile oases teeming with new species of flora.

The Shattering changed a great many things. While the landscapes of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor may have been the most visibly affected by Deathwing's return, many of Azeroth's heroes have also undergone drastic physical transformations of their own.

One of the most notable metamorphoses in Cataclysm is that of Thrall. Thrall He's worn many titles in his lifetime: slave, gladiator, shaman, chieftain of the Frostwolf Clan, and, most recently, warchief of the Horde. Now, as the son of Durotan puts down the mantle of warchief and takes up the simple garb of a shaman once again, we take a look back at his journey and the events that shaped him into the orc he is today.

The orcish Horde was once a demonic weapon of indiscriminate slaughter -- a far departure from the orcs' proud and shamanic origins. Thrall's rise to become Horde warchief, however, changed everything. After escaping from his enslavement by the human Aedelas Blackmoore, Thrall helped rally the remnants of the Horde, revitalized the orcs' shamanic traditions, and established a refuge for his embattled race in the arid land of Durotar. In the years that followed, the image of Warchief Thrall bearing the legendary warhammer and battle-worn black armor of the late Orgrim Doomhammer was etched in the minds of friends and foes alike. All that the Horde had become -- its courage, its strength, and its honor -- Thrall embodied.

When Azeroth's elemental spirits grew increasingly erratic just prior to the Shattering, Thrall was torn between his worldly responsibilities as warchief and his spiritual duties as a shaman. Ultimately, he followed his instincts and entrusted control over the Horde -- and everything he had labored to build -- to Garrosh Hellscream. Thrall also shed the armor that had come to symbolize him as warchief and donned the simplistic robes and prayer beads of a shaman. While Garrosh has made questionable changes to the Horde in recent times, Thrall remains focused on allaying the forces that threaten to tear Azeroth itself apart. Some members of the Horde might want him as their warchief, but the world needs him as a shaman above all else.

We'll be examining other key characters' transformations -- including those of Garrosh, Anduin Wrynn, and Magni Bronzebeard -- in the months ahead, so come back soon.

Heroic Dungeons Difficulty
Players were conditioned at the end of Wrath of the Lich King to mow through Heroics at lightning speed. Not only were they too easy to begin with, by the time Dungeon Finder came out players greatly out-geared the majority of these dungeons.

The reality is that it makes sense for Heroics to be a true and necessary stepping stone into raiding. They are more difficult at the beginning of this expansion's lifespan than they were at the beginning of Lich King. We like it that way. We want you thinking and trying new approaches through trial and error in order to succeed, just as groups do while raiding.

As new tiers of gear are released and new raids open up, Heroics will naturally become easier, but that provides little good reason for trivializing them now. This is true even if some groups -- particularly pick-up groups -- lack the patience, will, or teamwork necessary to succeed.

We prefer that skill and character power provide the edge in Heroic dungeons, rather than supplying simple boss fights where mistakes are so easily forgivable.

Will it test you to play at your best and communicate effectively with your group? Certainly. Should Heroic dungeons be tuned down so failure is rarely a real possibility? That doesn't sound like interesting design to me, nor would it act as a good catalyst for compelling, strategic, and social gameplay.

[...] You might have to spend more time in normal dungeons than you did before if you want a very relaxing dungeon experience right now, before you jump into Heroics determined to succeed with ease. The difficulty of this expansion is on a different level right now, but it's still nowhere near the gap between five-player dungeons and raiding which existed in the original release, and to a lesser extent The Burning Crusade.

If you expect a quick, mellow run through Heroic dungeons -- which provide quite powerful gear given we're on the first Cataclysm raid tier -- this early in the entire lifespan of this expansion, you might want to consider collecting items and gear via normal dungeons and other means before regularly hopping into the Heroic queue. They're not super-unfriendly toward casual players, but they do require casual players to exercise skill and proper social/leadership skills. (Source)

Daze / Dismount
Granted, there are plenty of creatures out there that provide a completely trivial challenge for your character in terms of power/level which can daze you. Even still, knowing how to path around hostile creatures (or now fly over them) seems like it should be somewhat meaningful. It's not that hard to avoid being hit by creatures while mounted, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have to care at all about where you're going.

Regardless of level, the world should still feel alive and present some sort of threat, even if that threats merely involves slowing you down en route to your destination.

[...] I don't really follow the logic that you feel it's unnecessary that you can't just gather as many mobs on you as possible in an area with no threat of being knocked off your mount, or slowed down while running. Should it really be considered an inconvenience that a bunch of mobs striking you can do nothing to slow you down? It seems like you could then apply the term "inconvenience" to a lot of aspects of gameplay, but at the end of the day removing those inconveniences would start to dull down the game. (Source)

We have a lot of players at 85 now doing everything from Heroic dungeons to rated Battlegrounds, and the class design team is starting to prepare our list of items to investigate for our next patch.

Before you dive down into the meat below (not really a pleasant image, that), be advised that we’re still early in the preliminary stages. The patch isn’t coming out tomorrow. I wrote this before the end of the year and other things may have cropped up in the meantime. Just because your class or pet problem isn’t mentioned below doesn’t mean we won’t address it.

PvE
We’re happy with damage overall. We have very few traditional tank and spank fights (even Argaloth likes to parry melee) so it’s hard to get consistent numbers without very large data sets. Still, we see Survival hunters and Unholy DKs on top of a lot of single target fights. Arcane, Marksman, and Beastmaster damage is too low. Retribution, Shadow, and Fire and Frost mage damage might be too low, but we’re still watching them. We aren’t seeing a lot of Subtlety rogues in PvE yet, so that sample size is still small. On fights where there is a lot of area damage, Demonology warlocks, Frost DKs and possibly Survival hunters are all too high. Shadow priest AE, mostly due to a weak Mind Sear, feels too low.

Healing in PvE is working out pretty much as intended. There are some Heroic dungeon bosses that are probably tougher than the required item level average permits. In general, you might have a tough time upon zoning into a Heroic dungeon with a bunch of strangers as soon as Dungeon Finder permits, especially if your group isn’t willing to communicate and work together. We want Heroics to be challenging -- if you want to zerg the content, stick to normal dungeons.

Tank balance overall seems good at this point in time. Threat seems to be in a good place -- good tanks don’t have much of a problem, but they can’t “phone it in” either. We’re seeing all four tanks get a lot of use, even on Heroic raid fights. That could change as more guilds are able to make serious heroic attempts.

PvP
The larger health pools, decreased impact of Mortal Strike debuffs, and slower healing are all having the desired effect in PvP. Burst damage has its place, but doesn’t determine the outcome of every encounter. There are several individual abilities that we aren’t happy with in PvP.

We’re keeping a close eye on dispels. We still like the design of making dispels more of a commitment rather than liberally sprinkling around dispel resistance or consequences for every class. Defensive dispels (removing a debuff) generally feel good, but we think offensive dispels (removing an enemy buff) feel too powerful, especially for DPS specs. In particular, Purge and Spellsteal will probably get nerfed.

We’re also looking at crowd control, interrupts, and self-healing in PvP. It’s possible we’ll reduce the durations of some crowd control effects, especially the area effect ones, and decrease the duration of interrupts.

Priests are a little weak in PvP, especially at mobile healing. We have made some changes to glyphs and talents to enhance their survivability and instant healing.

We also want to make sure the epic PvP gear isn’t too easy for just anyone to obtain, given that the PvE endgame content is more challenging than it was in Lich King. We don’t want the player base to just migrate to the most efficient epic delivery mechanism; we want you to participate in what you find most enjoyable.

Stats
We’ll make a pass to make stats that aren’t attractive (but are supposed to be) more attractive. For example, we don’t want Assassination rogues to dismiss crit or Feral tanks to dismiss haste. We are considering making some physical attacks such as Lacerate, Steady Shot, and Slam scale with haste.

Mastery is a new stat for us, and there are a few specs that don’t value it enough. In some cases (e.g. Combat rogues), the design for mastery is fine and we just need to buff the effects to make it more desirable. In others, we don’t think it’s possible to buff mastery enough in its current form. For example, the Retribution mastery, Hand of Light, is fun, but it doesn’t contribute enough damage. To make it contribute enough damage, the proc would need a very high chance, which then can cause paladins to devalue other sources of Holy Power. Instead, we are redesigning Retribution mastery to add a percentage of the damage of Templar’s Verdict, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm as Holy damage (which also plays better with Inqusition). Because Hand of Light is fun, however, we are going to change Divine Purpose as a chance to proc Hand of Light instead of a chance for extra Holy Power (which will also remove a little of the randomness from the rotation). Unholy DKs are another spec for whom mastery just isn’t working out. Our current intent is to redesign their mastery so that their attacks cause more damage to diseased targets (in a similar manner to the Restoration druid mastery).

Potpourri
Some additional class-specific tweaks (keeping in mind this is not the full list):

General

• We’re making some additional buffs, such as Pain Suppression and Barkskin, undispellable.
• We think we overnerfed Every Man for Himself, and are reverting it back to a 2-minute cooldown again. We might evaluate other racials after we’ve seen more PvP.

Death Knight (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• We want to make sure Unholy DKs prefer two-handed weapons.
• Necrotic Strike needs to be affected by resilience.
• For Cataclysm, we changed Death Strike almost completely into an ability for Blood DK tanks, which is a bit unfortunate. We want to make sure it is still a useful button for Frost or Unholy DKs who need healing.
• We also want to address DK mobility in PvP.

Druid (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Even after we fixed their mastery, Feral druid bleeds still do a lot of damage and are undispellable. We plan to shift some of that damage back to main attacks. They are also a little too hard to control. Given that they are already hard to root, snare, or polymorph, we think the fear immunity from Berserk is too much.
• We’re buffing Wild Mushroom. It’s a cool spell that isn’t getting enough play.
• Empowered Touch will now benefit from Regrowth as well. We’re also buffing the Glyph of Regrowth.
• We are looking at Holy Concentration (after our most recent buff) and Omen of Clarity to make sure they don’t account for too much mana savings.

Hunter (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• As part of the Marks and Beastmaster buffs, we’re buffing Aimed Shot, Kill Shot, Chimera Shot, and Kill Command.

Mage (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• To reduce mage control, we are discussing reducing the duration of Frost Nova and Ring of Frost.

Paladin (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Censure will no longer break Repentance.

Priest (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• For Holy priests, we’re increasing Chakra’s duration and changing Surge of Light so it can now from Flash Heal and Greater Heal and can crit.

Rogue (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• We want to make it clear that Combat is intended to use fast off-hand weapons. We also want to polish Revealing Strike a bit.

Shaman (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• We want to make sure Enhancement shaman avoid caster weapons.

Warlock (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• We are probably going to remove Drain Mana from warlocks. It is incredibly situational in PvE but causes problems in PvP. This might mean we need to evaluate Mana Burn as well.
• Inferno will no longer increase the radius of Hellfire.
• Shadow and Flame can now proc from Incinerate in addition to Shadow Bolt.
• We want to redesign Improved Soulfire.

Warrior (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Arms warrior burst damage might still be too high in PvP, while we don’t have a great way to adjust their sustained damage for PvE. The Lambs to the Slaughter talent is a good place to address this. We also might nerf warrior stuns.
• We think Arms and Fury warriors are getting too much damage out of Heroic Strike. We want it to be clear that it’s a rage dump and not make it the hardest hitting ability.

“GC, is this the final list of changes? Does this mean I can expect no changes for my class? Does this mean you don’t care about me?”

No. This is some stuff we are looking at so that you’ll have some context if you see changes on a future PTR. The final list of class patch notes for the next patch will doubtless be much longer.

- Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft. He uses words like “potpourri.”

Here you will find a list of hotfixes that address various issues related to the release of patch 4.0.3a and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. While many have already been deployed on all realms, some may not be implemented until the next time your realm is restarted. We will continue to update this thread in the days ahead as additional hotfixes are applied.

December 22 - 27

General

• Graveyard Rats are no longer considered critters and do not give credit toward the Critter Kill Squad guild achievement.
• Weekly guild reputation caps should now properly reset at the scheduled time. An error which prevented this reset from taking place if guild experience was earned at exactly 3:00 AM server time immediately prior to weekly maintenance has been corrected.
• The achievement Saving for a Rainy Day has the same requirements as its predecessor Time to Open a Savings Account. For this reason Saving for a Rainy Day has been temporarily disabled (it will still show in the user interface), as it requires a fix via a client-side patch.

Druid (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• The heal from Frenzied Regeneration was too powerful and has been reduced by 50%.
• Pounce now correctly shares diminishing returns with other stun effects.

Rogue (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Cheap Shot now correctly shares diminishing returns with other stun effects.

Warlock (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• The Felguard ability Axe Toss now properly shares diminishing returns with other stun effects.

Dungeons & Raids
Blackwing Descent

• Sweltering Armor is now properly applied to Magmaw's Mangle target once the debuff has faded, regardless of whether Magmaw was successfully impaled or not.

Gnomeregan

• Mekgineer Thermaplugg no longer sometimes awards dungeon completion prematurely.

Throne of the Four Winds

• It is no longer possible to disarm Al'Akir.

Items

• The Inner Eye proc from Heroic and normal versions of Jar of Ancient Remedies was not activating with some priest healing effects. This has been corrected.
• The Signet of High Arcanist Savor and Gilnean Ring of Ruination now have proper stats.

Professions
Archaeology

• Vashj'ir dig sites no longer unlock for players. They felt too punishing without additional benefits compared to low-level sites, and were much more difficult to obtain artifacts in due to the way Vashj'ir navigation works.

Cooking

• Stormwind Lobster Traps now respawn more quickly and can be gathered across all Stormwind quest phases.

Inscription

• The following reagents no longer have limits and are now available from Una Kobuna and Casandra Downs in unlimited quantities: Deathwing Scale Fragment, Scavenged Dragon Horn, Bleached Jawbone, Silver Charm Bracelet, and Preserved Ogre Eye.

PvP
Arenas

• Arena ratings are appropriately tabulating for wins and losses. More information on this issue can be found on our forums.
• Negative amounts of Conquest Points can no longer be awarded after a match win.

Battlegrounds

• Upon winning a rated Battleground, rating, wins, and Conquest Points are awarded and display properly.
• Negative amounts of Conquest Points can no longer be awarded after a match win.

Tol Barad

• Winning as an attacker now rewards players with 1800 Honor Points, up from 180. Winning as a defender still rewards players with 180 Honor Points.

Quests & Creatures
Deepholm

• Gyreworms, Enormous Gyreworms, and Gorged Gyreworms no longer drop money or elite-level loot.

Tol Barad

• Cell Watchers in the D-Block area no longer have boss-like immunities. Interrupts, stuns, snares, taunts, knockbacks, Banish, Root, Freeze, Fear, Horror and Death Grip all work correctly.

Twilight Highlands

• Crucible of Carnage quests can no longer be shared.

Uldum

• The Unearthing Uldum quest achievement can now be obtained after completing 105 quests in Uldum, down from 108.
• Players are now granted 250 Ramkahen reputation after completing the daily quest "Fire From the Sky".

Vashj'ir

• The Luxscale Grouper's Grouper Bite debuff now has a 5-second duration and will no longer sometimes get stuck on characters.

Zul'Drak

• Due to adjusted health pools, the heal-over-time effect provided by Blightblood Infusion (used by players controlling the Blightblood Troll) during the Overlord Drakuru encounter has been increased.