World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

July 8

Classes

• Combat pets should no longer aggro creatures while the player is mounted.

Dungeons & Raids
Firelands

• Baleroc
  
  • Death knight Bloodworms are no longer removing stacks of Torment when they explode to heal other players.
• Ragnaros
  
  • Molten Elementals are no longer able to critically hit players.
  • The responsiveness of the Molten Power ability has been increased on Heroic difficulty.
• Rhyolith
  
  • Multiple volcanoes casting Eruption will now create separate stacks. Crushing a volcano will cause its stacks of Eruption to fade shortly after.
  • Ranged pets can no longer damage Rhyolith’s legs without beginning the encounter.
• The Ancient Lava Dweller can no longer be looted by engineers with the Loot-A-Rang.
• Unbound Pyrelords are no longer casting Ignite Elemental on the same target. All Unbound Smoldering Elementals should now be changed to Unbound Blazing Elementals by the time the pyrelord dies.
• The Unbreakable Shell buff present on Unbound Smoldering Elementals now reduces damage received by 50%, down from 90%.
• Unbound Smoldering Elementals are now correctly resetting and are no longer retaining Blazing Flame when they leave combat.

Items

• Riplimb’s Lost Collar seemed to truly be lost. This item now properly has a chance to drop from select creatures.
• Several Ruthless Gladiator’s items have had their Stamina values increased to more appropriate levels.

We wanted to let everyone know that we’re working to address the miscommunication that occurred regarding the introduction of new item level 371 PvP gear, and share our current plans.

For background, many players spent their Honor Points on item level 365 gear once Season 9 ended only to find that more powerful item level 371 gear was available when season 10 started. We should have communicated ahead of time that this was going to be the case, and we apologize for the mistake.

We’ve been working over the past few days to evaluate and determine the best course of action to offer players some kind of compensation for those who were caught off guard by the new gear. The plan we’ve found to be achievable within an acceptable amount of time is to provide players who were affected with 4000 Honor Points. This extra Honor would function similarly to the currency down-conversion in that it would stack over the cap, but you would not be able to earn more until you spent under the 4000 cap.

The process of determining who was affected is certainly the most difficult task of this issue, and the entire process of figuring out who should receive the Honor or not and then delivering it isn’t anything less than a giant undertaking. We’re still evaluating many of the processes that will be required to make this happen. Although we’re fairly confident we can pull it off, there is still a chance it may not be possible. Due to other service related work the soonest we would be able to distribute this Honor is the 7/19 Tuesday maintenance. More complicated solutions we discussed could take months to implement, but we felt getting something to those affected as quickly as possible was more important.

Although some of this is still uncertain we felt it best to let people know as far in advance as possible to allow for adequate planning. We’ll be able to provide more information and specifics on how this process will be carried out, and the requirements to receive the 4000 Honor, next week.

Again, we apologize for any inconvenience caused by our miscommunication. We greatly appreciate those who took the time to give us constructive feedback on the matter.

The Battle.net Mobile Authenticator, an application for mobile phones that provides an extra layer of account security, is now available as a free download for Windows® Phone 7 devices on the Windows Phone Marketplace. The Battle.net Mobile Authenticator provides a one-time password that you use in addition to your regular account name and password when you log in to a Battle.net account to play World of Warcraft or StarCraft II.

Versions for other mobile devices are also available for download here, or you can purchase a physical Battle.net Authenticator from the online Blizzard Store. Visit the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator FAQ for more information, or head to the setup page to get started after you've downloaded the application.

For additional account security advice, check out our Account Security page.

With Season 9 recently passed, new PvP rewards distributed, and Season 10 now underway, we’d like to remind everyone about the importance of fair play. To be clear, cheating is not tolerated in World of Warcraft, and exploitation of ranked PvP play is no exception. Before distributing rewards to the top performers in Season 9, we conducted a thorough sweep looking for any players or teams that were clearly attempting to manipulate the ladder system. These players were dealt with accordingly and did not receive any undue rewards. It’s important to note, however, that there are many cases where it may appear that players have manipulated the system, when they in fact were legitimately competing like most everyone else. We not only want to make sure our actions are comprehensive -- we must make sure they’re accurate.

That said, we’ll continue to ensure fair play is taking place going forward, and will be implementing changes to our matchmaking rating system soon to resolve this type of ladder system manipulation.

The Recruit-A-Friend feature offers amazing perks to World of Warcraft players who ask a friend to join them in their adventures through Azeroth. With the 4.2 patch we’ve made the rewards even better, as you can now reap the benefits while leveling all the way to 80.

When you recruit a friend to play World of Warcraft, you’ll be able to send them a unique referral key. When they use this specific trial key to activate a new account, you’ll both receive a number of perks to help you level up together.

• Worried about spending a long time leveling up? No problem! You and your recruit you will gain triple experience while partied, up to level 80.
• Even if you don’t have as much time to play as your recruit, they’ll be able to help you catch up. For every two levels a recruit character earns, they'll gain one "grantable" level. Recruit characters can then grant these levels to your lower level veteran character.
• You won’t have to worry about getting separated; you’ll be able to summon one another to each other's locations from anywhere in the game.
• You’ll receive a credit for 30 days of free game play for each recruit you refer who upgrades to a retail version of World of Warcraft and subscribes.
• Once one of your recruits has paid for 60 days of game time you’ll be able to send an X-53 Touring Rocket to any of your characters! The X-53 is a unique flying mount able to carry a passenger, and only available from Recruit-A-Friend.

For a full rundown on each of these features, requirements, and limitations, hit the Recruit-A-Friend FAQ. You can also run through a visual guide of the referral process, as well as how to redeem your X-53 Touring Rocket.

Otherwise go ahead and…

Spell effects visuals and Divine Aegis
Something we’ve been hearing for a couple of years from players is that our spell effects, which are typically designed to look awesome when used all by themselves, create an undecipherable visual cacophony when used in large group settings, such as raids or Battlegrounds. In Cataclysm, we made a major effort to reduce the visual impact on targets that were being bombarded with multiple spells at once. For example, some visuals that looked cool (but weren’t really conveying any useful information that the group needed to know) scaled up way too large on bosses. Moonfire and Incinerate are two examples of spells that had this problem, and were changed for Cataclysm. We also offered a nifty UI option called “Emphasize my spell visuals” which still makes your spells look awesome to you, but slightly diminishes the visuals being produced by the rest of your group. After all, isn’t it most important that *you* look amazing?

That option, by the way, can be found in-game by going to Esc|Interface|Display.

With the visual spam on enemy targets relaxed a bit, we then turned to the visual spam on friendly targets. Some spells, and heals were particularly guilty of this, had a lot of visual flourishes that looked awesome, but were simply overwhelming when layered on top of all of the other visual commotion going on in an encounter. Two spells we changed at the last minute were Divine Light and Divine Aegis. To use the particular example of Divine Aegis, the visual wasn’t too bad when it was only created by infrequent crits, but once we allowed Prayer of Healing to always cause Divine Aegis, the flashes on the screen became distracting and obscured the view of what was actually happening in the fight. If you want to see this for yourself, check out some pre-4.2 raid videos.

We changed Divine Aegis very late in the 4.2 patch cycle, so we used the temporary solution of using the Power Word: Shield impact, which is much less prominent. A more permanent solution will be to get a new visual for Divine Aegis that is unique but doesn't go too far, or perhaps distinguish between the shields caused by crits and the heals caused by Prayer of Healing. We recognize that there is some visual information conveyed by Divine Aegis (for example, you may want to dispel Power Word: Shield but not Divine Aegis) and we totally agree that the new (temporary) visual is not as cool as the older one. We’re looking into some other solutions as well as we strive to find a balance between making your spells look flashy while still having a battle that is possible to comprehend by, you know, actually looking at it. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Two-Hand Weapons too small?
We discussed this with the developers yesterday. It seems some of the two-handed weapons are getting smaller, while the one-handed weapons are getting bigger. We like the basic idea of players being able to tell what kind of weapon a character is holding just by looking at them. There should be no visual confusion between a one-handed weapon and a two-handed weapon.

It's not likely there will be any major art updates coming before the next patch, but this is definitely something for us to keep in mind going forward. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Guilds going through Firelands Raid encounter in 2 weeks
I am endlessly intrigued to find players judging the difficulty of the encounters and how long lived the content is by how pro players, some of the most skilled and focused players in the world, engage the content. It's a little like judging the difficulty of juggling eight chainsaws by what the best jugglers in the world can accomplish. Sure, it might be easy for them, but when was the last time you tried it? (Do not attempt to juggle eight chainsaws. Do not attempt to juggle any chainsaws. Unless you are a juggler. A professional chainsaw juggler. A really, really good professional chainsaw juggler who does not fear chainsaw manglings.)

The content wasn't designed to be 'quick'. It was designed to be epic, engaging, challenging and fun. It can accomplish those goals without being punishing.

It is kind of remarkable how fun and engaging the content can be when we start judging content by what we accomplish and experience ourselves, rather than the posts we read on the forums or the headlines of a fansite. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

General

• An issue has been corrected that would cause players to lose their progress towards Veteran of the Horde II, Veteran of the Alliance II, Warbringer of the Horde, or Warbound Veteran of the Alliance if Veteran of the Horde or Veteran of the Alliance were complete.

Classes

• Characters should no longer disconnect or receive movement enforcement errors when certain spells, abilities, or item effects are used while on moving transports.

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Faerie Fire and Faerie Fire (Feral) will now remove Stealth, Invisibility, Vanish, Shadowmeld and Prowl from players.

Mage (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• When using Spellsteal on a shaman, Lava Flows will no longer be given to the mage as a buff. The buff, however, will be removed from the shaman.

Priest (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• Shadowfiend is now causing the casting priest to enter combat when cast on enemy players.

Shaman (Forums / Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)

• A Fulmination critical strike for more than 30,000 damage (10-player) or 45,000 damage (25-player) should now properly interrupt Rageface’s Face Rage in the Firelands.
• When Lava Flows is stolen by a mage via Spellsteal, the mage will no longer gain the Lava Flows buff.

Dungeons & Raids
Firelands

• Heroic difficulty has been activated and is accessible in all regions.
• Pet corpses, guardians, and placed items should no longer provoke Engorged Broodlings to a premature detonation.
• The pack of creatures fighting each other around Flamewaker Beast Handlers will stop fighting each other and attack the raid once provoked.
• Flamewaker Subjugators now award 50 reputation, up from 15, while Flamewaker Animators award no reputation or loot.
• The aggro radius on the third pack of Hells Hounds on the way to Beth’tilac has been reduced.
• Unstable Pyrelords now have an active stealth detection aura present when the gauntlet is triggered which prevents stealth classes from traversing up the hill undetected.

Baleroc

• Baleroc’s health has been increased on 10-player Heroic difficulty.
• Baleroc's gate now despawns properly when he resets.
• Shards of Torment despawn when Baleroc resets even if they are spawned after Baleroc has despawned.

Lord Rhyolith

• Lord Rhyolith can now be quickly snapped from left to right, or right to left, if the appropriate amount of damage is dealt to the opposite foot.
• Lord Rhyolith now prefers to activate volcanoes that are in front of him over volcanoes that are behind him.
• Lord Rhyolith now spawns slightly further back on his platform, allowing players to stand on the edge of the terrain and not aggro him.
• Lord Rhyolith no longer despawns when reaching the end of the encounter area, and does not despawn when casting Drink Magma from any of the possible locations.
• Lord Rhyolith now summons in volcanoes when intended, and it is no longer possible for the first set of volcanoes to be ignored.

Majordomo Staghelm

• Majordomo Staghelm has had his health increased by 10% on Heroic difficulty.

Ragnaros

• Living Meteors no longer evade and return to their spawn point when their original target dies or uses a threat drop. They will instead choose a new target.
• The Sons of Flame can no longer be missed by melee attacks and abilities.

Shannox

• Shannox will now rotate when appropriate instead of moving to get in range of his target while being tanked.
• Shannox will always use Hurl Spear after a raid wipes, even if Riplimb collapsed just prior to the group wiping.

Items

• Jamus’Vaz and Faldren Tillsdale are once again offering players Conquest Points in exchange for Valor Points.
• Normal and Heroic versions of Deflecting Star now correctly bind when picked up.
• Eternal Embers are now epic quality.
• Normal and Heroic versions of Pauldrons of Roaring Flame now have mastery rating instead of hit rating.
• Ruthless, Vicious, and Bloodthirsty Gladiator’s Clasps of Cruelty have had their Stamina values increased to remain consistent with equivalent belts. Note that the tooltip will require a patch to update.

Quests & Creatures
Hyjal Regrowth & Molten Front

• Players are now receiving 6 Marks of the World Tree from Caught Unawares and 10 marks from The Sanctuary Must Not Fall, which now allows players to obtain 20 marks as soon as they finish their first days’ worth of daily quests and unlock the Molten Front. The amount of marks offered is properly updated in player Quest Logs as well.
• There are now many more Wounded Hyjal Defenders to accommodate a large concurrency of players in the Molten Front.
• The Fiery Behemoths and Molten Behemoths are now the same size.
• Rayne Feathersong has been moved from the cave and is still available as a daily quest giver at Malfurion's Breach.

Thanks for making a clear-cut thread summarizing why this is a big issue within the PvP community, Tauranewone. To keep communication on this as clear as possible, I'll try and clarify what has happened with the transition between Season 9 and 10, as well as give you our take. For everyone reading along, please do not create new threads on this issue. We'll be primarily watching this one and would prefer to keep our forums as easy to read as possible.

Before getting into it, I want you all to know that we've maintained an open dialog with our developers over the past 24 hours regarding the way in which the PvP season transition went down since patch 4.2 (this includes relaying a lot of the feedback we've seen on the forums to them). We agree that the mistakes made were very unfortunate and unfair to a lot of players. We're currently exploring some options to try and alleviate some of the misfortune many of you experienced while purchasing PvP gear in the last week.

First off, to be clear, we made two mistakes which led to the primary cause of frustration for players:




These two errors compacted each other. Players were left with no more than 4,000 Honor Points after patch 4.2, which led many players to farm more HP to buy Season 9 gear. Then, when Season 10 hit yesterday, Season 9 (ilvl 365) items were replaced with an HP tier of Season 10 (ilvl 371) items. Since players didn't know this would happen, many of you farmed HP and spent it on the Season 9 items prior to yesterday's maintenance.

Obviously most of you already know what happened and are very frustrated by it, but I just want to clarify the nature of the unrest, as well as the intended way this season transition was to happen. This is the way it should have worked, and how it should work going forward:




We've seen a lot of players ask what the purpose is of having Season 9 items available for purchase with Honor Points for a week, before replacing them with better items. The purpose was for people to spend their excess Honor Points on any leftover items, as once the next season starts players can't keep more than 4,000 HP to spend. Now, the reason why this intent wasn't evident to most players is because we capped HP a week too early, which made spending any Honor Points last week less than ideal. The reality is players would have been better off saving 4,000 HP for the start of Season 10 when ilvl 371 gear was released. But they had no way of knowing that.

That is about all of the information I have to share on this subject at the moment, but I want to remind you that the issues with this season transition are well on our radar. We know we messed up in multiple ways. This not only made our intentions very unclear, but led players to make choices to spend their Honor Points they otherwise probably would not have made.

If everything went according to plan, you probably would've spent any HP over the 4,000 cap last week on any remaining Season 9 items you maybe didn't have. You then would have saved 4,000 HP to get started on the low tier Season 10 items. This is the way we're looking at it and will let you know if and when we have more information to share.

Our http://battle.net/wow website will be undergoing maintenance on July 7, beginning around 1:30 p.m. PDT. We currently anticipate this maintenance period to last approximately 3 hours while we apply the necessary updates. During this time, access to the World of Warcraft website, including the forums, will be unavailable. We thank you in advance for your patience.

For those of you who may need to access Account Management, http://battle.net/account should remain available while maintenance is performed.

Soloing Firelands Raid Trash
If you're soloing Firelands trash, it's for a reason that will be corrected. We've already fixed several situations where this was possible, either by buffing the creatures, increasing the range of their abilities, or removing their loot/greatly reducing the rewards they provide.

[...] Most of the changes weren't just due to solo players killing creatures in there, or pug trash runs. Many of the loot tables just had much higher drop percentages than intended. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Racial traits balance in raid
Racial traits primarily exist to add flavor to each race, and to a lesser extent, situational advantages in line with the theme of each race. Naturally each one works better in some situations than others.

A player who wishes to can and should raid as Forsaken, or any other race that they enjoy playing. It's extremely unlikely that if a player has proven themselves capable, that a competent raid leader would turn them away based on their character's race. There are, after all, a very healthy number of Forsaken raiders active at this very moment.

[...] There are a number of ways to optimize a character outside of racials. I'm not saying that they can't be useful, or that certain racials aren't nice to have in certain circumstances (particularly in PvP) - that would be foolish.

I'm just saying that in general their importance has been over-emphasized. By and large, you can still be effective playing the race you want to play. The assertion that one cannot raid because they choose to play Forsaken is preposterous. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Season 9 Feats of Strength Bug
It wasn't intended for the mounts and titles to go out without their associated feats of strength. Unfortunately, this cannot be addressed via a hotfix and will require a client-side patch. The Season 9 feats of strength will be rewarded retroactively in a future patch to those who should have gotten them with the start of Season 10. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

PvP Season 10 has officially begun, and players can once again take to the Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds to compete for the new Ruthless Gladiator PvP sets!

All Team Ratings and Personal Ratings have been reset, and any Conquest Points from Season 9 have been converted to Honor Points. Any Honor Points above the cap were converted into gold at a rate of 35 silver per point. Matchmaking Ratings, however, will be carried over into Season 10.

Another important event that coincides with the start of Season 10 is the distribution of rewards from the previous season. Players who were in the top teams from each battlegroup at the end of season 9 should be receiving their end-of-season rewards approximately one week after the end of the last season. These include Arena-specific titles until the end of this new season and, for players who have earned the rank of gladiator, the Vicious Gladiator’s Twilight Drake. It's very important for players who feel that they may be eligible for Arena titles and/or the Vicious Gladiator’s Twilight Drake to refrain from transferring their characters to another realm or faction until all rewards have been received.

If you have any further questions about Arena and Rated Battleground rewards, please read the FAQ.

- Season 10 Gear List and FAQ

Stats balance on gear
Stat balance on gear should be looked at via much more than just boss loot tables. We consider reputation gear, tailor gear, Valor gear and the tier sets when examining what's available to you. If you wish, you can have Spirit on every slot but your belt (which can still be reforged). The priest tier set has Spirit on all 5 slots.

Having said that, the mindset that only cloth with spirit is priest healer gear (and cloth with no spirit is never priest healer gear) is a mindset to be resisted. If that is allowed to set in, then all the fun of looking at a potential new piece of gear and deciding for yourself whether it is an upgrade for you is removed entirely.

Along those lines, something to keep in mind is that there is more to improving the healing you do in cloth than simply stacking spirit. As you increase spell power, haste, and crit, and your tank increases health, armor and avoidance, boss damage negates less of your mana in the first place. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Arena Season 10 Start and new gear
You are correct. The season transition and introduction of new PvP items was different this time around, and we apologize for the lack of advanced warning.

The Season 9 set was removed today. The items available for purchase with Honor Points are now considered lower tier Season 10 items. They are still the same items from Season 9 in terms of aesthetics, but the item level and stats are slightly higher to ensure that the Season 10 honor gear has the correct item level relative to the Season 10 conquest gear.

It's likely this is how things will work going forward and we'll be sure to make that more clear when the next season transition takes place.

New basic transition flow:

1) Season X ends and rated play is unavailable; Season X gear becomes available for purchase with HP; CP is wiped.
2) One week later Season Y starts and rated play is available; Season X gear is removed entirely; Season Y introduces a low tier of items which replace Season X vendor items and are available for HP; Season Y introduces the new top items available for CP and rated play. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Lava Bolt Crossbow / Lava Bolt Crossbow sounds like a gun
This is a known issue for which we have a fix. The crossbow shouldn't sound like a gun. 'Cause that'd be silly.

Updating sound files requires a client-side patch, so unfortunately this cannot be addressed via a hotfix. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)