World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

As previously announced (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...7814533?page=1), Conquest weapons requiring 2200 rating were to be made available today, January 25, but have been delayed. We currently plan to make the 2200 weapons available approximately two weeks after the release of patch 4.0.6.

The decision to further delay availability of weapons requiring 2200 rating was not made lightly. Currently very few guilds are clearing PvE content that drops weapons of this caliber, which would make rated Battlegrounds and Arenas the primary source for top-tier weapons. We of course don’t want players who are pursuing PvE content to feel as though they must engage in heavy PvP to obtain these weapons in order to be competitive or successful.

We do have some plans to help avoid similar situations in the future, and we’ll share more details when they become available.

Price of Trade goods from Justice Vendors
They're definitely not cost effective and certainly not meant for everyone. Even still, there are scores of people out there with large excesses of Justice Points, with no need (or ability) to obtain more, and nothing to spend them on. This provides an excellent alternative for a select portion of players.

For everyone else who isn't concerned with the Justice Point cap or how to spend them, these vendors can be disregarded. They're not meant to replace the activity of farming for tradeskill materials for the general populace. (Source)

Enhanced Maps
We're definitely looking into ways to add more information about raid and dungeon bosses directly into the game client. For example, as discussed at BlizzCon 2010 in the Raids and Dungeons panel, we're already discussing the possibility of incorporating loot tables and boss abilities into zone maps. While "enhanced maps" are still in their formative stages, we love the idea of a player being able to access a variety of information about a specific boss -- including what it drops, what abilities it has, and maybe even some lore about who it is and why everyone in Azeroth wants to kill it -- just by opening her map and mousing over an icon.

This is all still on the horizon, of course, and would likely be something that's implemented in stages. Nevertheless, we agree that the game could provide better tools for players who are adapting to new content and are currently working to bridge that gap for the future (in a meaningful way that doesn't undermine or spoil the experience). (Source)

PvP Sets bonus nerf
Right now some hybrid classes benefit from wearing a pair of 2 piece set bonuses in PvP instead of their 4 piece bonus. We don't much like that behavior though, and we're going to eventually make the two bonuses exclusive so you can only ever have one 2 piece bonus at a time. We're not going to make that change in 4.0.6 as we realize some people have spent a lot of points to buy into the double-2 piece bonuses. However, it is likely we'll make the change at the start of the next PvP season. (Source)

Arena Weapons Availability
Sometimes, you have to make an unpopular decision, and you take a lot of heat for it. I understand that you guys aren't happy, and I'm sorry about that.

With regard to the weapon delay, as with any change which affects your gameplay, we always prefer to provide advance notice whenever possible, but in some situations it isn't an option. Unfortunately, this was one of those cases.

Some of you may recall that there were times in the past when it was common for the Arenas to be flooded by geared raiders actively engaging in arena matches exclusively to acquire weapons for the sake of defeating PvE content. That's not the intended design for arena rewards (that they be part of PvE progression), and that was a situation that we were hoping to avoid now. Raid content is very challenging currently, and as a direct result, there are fewer top tier weapons floating around. What we didn't want was a 'gold rush' on arenas, which would diffuse the competitive space there as well as give PvE focused players an undue advantage for raid content.

Ultimately, what we really want is parity in the availability of top end PvP and PvE weaponry. We want to see top end PvP and PvE items filtering into the player community at roughly the same time. This delay is an effort to achieve that aforementioned parity in this case. (Source)

Bilgewater Cartel/Gilneas reputation from Elders
Thanks for the reports! We've implemented a hotfix to correct this issue and ensure that Horde players receive reputation with Bilgewater Cartel when completing Lunar Festival coin quests. (Source)

Elders reputation cap
I spoke with our designers a bit more about the Lunar Festival coin quests and what caps, if any, are place on the reputation provided from them. At present, these quests should only provide reputation with Horde (Orgrimmar, Undercity, Darkspear, Thunder Bluff, Silvermoon City, Bilgewater Cartel) and Alliance (Stormwind, Ironforge, Gnomeregan, Darnassus, Exodar, Gilneas) reputations up to 5999/6000 Friendly. This is indeed intended, as many of you have guessed, but we absolutely appreciate the feedback provided in this thread -- both in relation to the Lunar Festival and the reputation cap itself.

For clarity, there was a separate issue that was preventing eligible Horde characters, regardless of their faction standing, from earning Bilgewater Cartel reputation when completing the Lunar Festival coin quests. Even if they were Neutral with Bilgewater, for example, they were not receiving the 75 reputation as intended. This has since been resolved with a hotfix and should be live on all realms. (Source)

Storing Tabards
This is something we've been looking into for a while, and we're confident that we'll be able to implement a feature sometime in the future that gives players a better storage solution for their tabards. We're not sure if that feature will be a cosmetic tab or a drop-down list similar to titles just yet, though; there's still several factors that we need to consider carefully (certain tabards have on-use abilities, for example, which makes storing them a bit more complicated) before we can settle on the best course of action.

A 75 slot tabard only bag and bank slot doesn't sound any more complicated than a 32 slot mining bag.
Is that really the most elegant solution, though? It might be quickest and simplest, but that doesn't mean there aren't better alternatives available. If we can implement a type of storage that's integrated into the character UI and doesn't take up extra bank space, then that would be ideal.

That option might not be technically possible due to the way some tabards work, but it's something we're investigating.

[...] We're not trying to over complicate the situation, but if we're looking at adding a new feature, we want to make sure it's meaningful and appropriate for the game in the long-term. (Or, you know, at least try to.)

Right now, we're considering a variety of options because we agree that tabard storage would be great, and some of those options extend beyond simply adding another bank slot -- not because they're complex, but because we believe they'll make the most sense and feel the best when you're in game. (Source)

Paladin (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Conviction
Right, kind of. We discovered that Conviction (which can give up to a 9% healing bonus) was broken. It affected paladin self heals, but not healing other targets. Since we think that paladin healing throughput is in an overall good place we didn't want a 9% bonus sticking around. So we fixed Conviction and reduced the Holy passive, Walk in the Light, from 15% to 10%. Which actually does end up with a net 4% gain overall, assuming Conviction has near 100% uptime, which isn't too unreasonable.

Since it was applied in a hotfix the Walk in the Light tooltip won't be updated until 4.0.6. (Source)

Guilds

• The guild reward Armadillo Pup now requires revered faction instead of exalted.
• The guild faction requirement on the Guild Herald has been lowered to Revered reputation.

Dungeons & Raids

• Level-85 dungeon bosses in Lost City of the Tol'Vir, Grim Batol, and Halls of Origination now drop 30 Justice Points each when killed.
• The daily Random Dungeon reward on normal difficulty has been increased to 140 Justice Points, up from 70.
• Players no longer need to discover Cataclysm dungeon entrances in order to access them via the Dungeon Finder.

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

• Rejuvenation is now trained at level 3, down from level 8. In addition, its mana cost is now 20% of base mana.

Balance

• Moonkin Form now grants 15% damage reduction instead of increased armor. In addition, shapeshifting in or out of this form now breaks roots. Note this is not stated in the tooltip.

Feral

• Blood in the Water: Timing on this effect has been improved so that Ferocious Bite will immediately refresh Rip, rather than be slightly delayed (which gave a chance for the Rip to expire despite being refreshed).

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

• Divine Light mana cost has been increased by approximately 10%.
• Flash of Light mana cost has been increased by approximately 10%.
• Holy Light mana cost has been increased by approximately 10%.
• Lay on Hands now causes Forbearance on the target. It used to only cause it when cast on the paladin. This was an old design from when Divine Protection caused Forbearance and the paladin didn't want to prevent a tank from using their defensive cooldown.
• Lay on Hands cannot be a critical effect and will not be affected by most abilities which modify healing (such as Beacon of Light). In addition, Lay on Hands is no longer on the global cooldown.

Holy

• Aura Mastery: This ability no longer increases the benefit granted by Crusader Aura.

Protection

• Eternal Glory: The chance to not consume Holy Power from this talent now also applies to not consuming the clearcasting effect generated by Divine Purpose.

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

• Mind Blast now does 18% more damage than Mind Spike.

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

• Blade Flurry is now a toggle that can be turned off by pressing the button again. In addition, this ability no longer has a fixed duration, but will go on cooldown for 10 seconds after being canceled (similar to Stealth). In addition, Blade Flurry now reduces energy generation by 30% while active, up from 20%.

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

• Healing Rain now has a 40-yard radius, up from 30, to be consistent with other shaman heals.

Elemental

• Elemental Overload (Mastery) procs of Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning can now generate Rolling Thunder charges.

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

• Devour (Felhunter) cooldown has been increased to 20 seconds, up from 8. Devour is no longer able to be auto-cast.

Affliction

• Soul Swap can no longer be dispelled (the aura given to the warlock between swapping).

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

• Single-Minded Fury bonus has been increased to 20%, up from 15%.

Items

• The PvP Balance druid 4-piece set bonus effect has been increased to 20 Solar Energy and 13 Lunar Energy, up from 5 and 13. The effect will also now be more intelligent at choosing whether to give the druid Lunar or Solar Energy (it checks the Balance Power to determine which to give depending on which energy is higher at the time).

Quests & Creatures
Tol Barad

• Rusty Rifles will now spawn more frequently at Farson Keep.
• Players should now always receive 6 daily quests in Tol Barad Peninsula as intended, rather than sometimes only getting 5.