Blue tracker, Warlock Changes, Blue Posts, Site Updates

[Boubouille]

MMO-Champion Blue Tracker is here !
Now that the beta of Wrath of the Lich King started, the amount of blue posts on official forums has been growing more and more. That's the perfect time to release the beta of one of the new features of MMO-Champion, the blue tracker (http://blue.mmo-champion.com) !

This is an early beta and there are obviously a few things to add and fix but it's probably the best way to make sure you won't miss any posts, even the ones we don't report on the front page. As usual, this is an early beta, and as usual, people using Internet Explorer 6 will probably have to upgrade to IE7 or Firefox if they want to browse it. Please report any bug in comments !

Note : We're missing some of the recent posts in the DK / Achievements forums, this will be fixed within a few hours.
Note 2 : We're also testing a new server, you might experience a few downtimes while we tweak everything. (This won't affect the main site, only the blue tracker and the talent calculator)

Warlock Official Talent Calculator Update
Guess what ? The official talent calculator has been updated once again with what looks like a bunch of upcoming changes for warlocks !

Warlock
Affliction

• Curse of Exhaustion range increased from 30 yards to 36 yards.
• Haunt casting time reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.

Demonology

• Demonic Empathy reworked: When you or your per is critically hit, the other has a 33/66/100 % chance to have their casting or attack speed increased by 30% for 8 sec. (Previously gave 2/4/6 % increased damage for the next 3 spells or abilities when you or your pet critically hit with a spell or ability
• Metamorphosis cooldown increased from 3 minutes to 5 minutes. You transform into a Demon, with full health and mana. While in Demon Form, you gain Demonic abilities and your armor is increased to 360%, but your pet is no longer summoned. When leaving Demon Form, your health and mana is returned to normal and your pet is re-summoned. Lasts 45 seconds. (Previously transforms you into a Demon, increasing your armor by 360% and reducing the duration os stun and snare effects on you by 50%. While in Demon Form, you cannot cast spells, but you gain unique demon abilities.)

Destruction

• Bane no longer reduces casting time of Haunt.
• Eternal Flames reworked: Now called Fire and Brimstone. Increases the damage of your Immolate spell by an amount equal to 5% of your spell power, and the critical strike chance of your Conflagrate spell is increased by 5% is the immolate on the target has 5 or fewer seconds remaining. (Previously increased the damage done by your immolate on your target by 1%, and your Searing Pain and Incinerate spells increase the damage of your Immolate on the target by and additional 1/2/3/4/5 %, up to a total of 20%.
• Chaos Bolt cooldown reduces from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. Sends a bolt of Chaotic Fire at the enemy, dealing 1012 to 1278 Fire damage. Chaos Bolt cannot be resisted, and pierces through defensive immunities. (Previously sends a bolt of chaotic fire at the enemy, dealing 990 to 1256 Fire damage. Chaos Bolt cannot be resisted, and pierces through all absorption effects.)

Blue posts

Achievements
We're making all of the old keys obtainable if you deleted them. Same goes for pets and tabards. For keys, talk to a Locksmith. For Pets, talk to a stable master. For tabards, go to the tabard vendor. It's important to note that this ONLY works for pets/tabards/keys that cannot be obtained again by the player. This means that if a pet was a rare drop and you deleted it, you'll need to farm for it again. (Source)
A guildmaster can set up the chat broadcasts however he/she wants. They could turn off broadcasts for an entire guild or set it up by ranks. Personally, I think you're better off leaving achievement broadcasts enabled and letting individuals decide if they want it on or not through their chat settings. (Source)

Death Knight
The old Heart Strike was interesting but very confusing (though pehaps not as confusing as Degeneration as it turns out). It would have worked on bosses, but at a fraction of what it could to do non-elite mobs or other players. It also gets pretty confusing when you have to reapply Heart Strike. Did the target's bar go up or down? Did I actually do any damage? Would it have been better if it had fallen off or if I had reapplied it?

We liked the new mechanic because it's also something we haven't done before, because it's easy to understand, and because it has excellent PvE and PvP use. And, like Scourge Strike, if you don't care for the debuff, Heart Strike is still a nice talent because it does exactly what Blood Strike does but with bigger numbers. (Source)

---------

This is fun: Frost Fever, Pestilence, Howling Blast. The problem with Howling Blast before was you either had one target with Chains of Ice or many targets with Hungering Cold, but more infrequently. Because Pestilence can now smear Frost Fever to 3 additional targets, you can Howling Blast a group for bonus damage virtually on demand. If you are facing one enemy, then you can Obliterate instead of Howling Blast for the same cost. If you are facing a lot of enemies or get freaked out for some reason, it's time for Hungering Cold.

Obliterate is a fun ability, but because of that talents to improve it were popping up everywhere. Since it is technically a Frost attack (by which I mean it's on your Frost spell page, not that it does Frost damage) we tried to put synergy with Obliterate into Frost. Because only Unholy can have more than 2 diseases, the Unholy DK really likes Oblit too. The Blood DK can still use it, but we tried to work in some more Death Strike synergy into Blood since it is a healing tool.

I posted this elsewhere, but Death Strike is 1U, 1F. It isn't a hard hitter (i.e. Oblit is always a better choice when you want big numbers), but you are healed by a percentage of the damage per disease. With two diseases, you can be healed for 100% or more of the strike's damage. It has no mechanic tied to killing an enemy or hitting them when wounded any longer. You use it when you are feeling a little hurt. Hint: Use it when you fall below Blood Gorged's threshold. Fun ensues. (Source)

Druid
The design is for bears to be viable, end-game main tanks. The design is for cats to be viable, end-game melee dps. In both cases you are going to need the right talents, good gear, skill and companions who can back you up -- I don't mean to imply raiding will be easy.

If you want to do a little tanking and dps, you probably won't be as optimal at either, though you'll probably always be better at switching between the two than other classes. In order to be as good at tanking as the other classes, you might have to give up a few talents that maximize your dps, and vice versa. This is a good thing -- it lets you choose to actually be a main tank.

We are adding a new class to Lich King, as well as improving the raid viability of specs such as Arcane mage, Survival hunter and Balance druid. That means you have 30 available specs for 25 slots. There are two ways to design around this problem. One is that there are 25 mandatory specs and 5 that shouldn't be raiding. Boo. A more fun, interesting and ultimately fair direction is that you actually have some choices in who to bring. Imagine running a raid with no warrior tanks at all.

Don't worry about your bears. The armor and other changes were done to fix itemization issues, not to nerf druids. You've already gotten the ability to drink pots in bear form and benefit from weapon enchants and windfury. We have plenty of knobs to turn to make sure you can do your job even better than you could in LK. (Source)

Hunter

• Wolf's skill "Call of the Wild" generating a heavy amount of aggro is a bug. (Source)
• I really hate to mention this, but there is currently a single chimera that is tamable and he might even be a rare spawn. I feel bad making you run all over the world trying to find him. Next patch there will be many more. (Source)
• We might try something where the talent (Heart of the Phoenix) still auto-rezzes the pet, but takes a few seconds longer so that hopefully whatever gibbed Fluffy in the first place isn't going to just do it again. It's a tricky balance because if the delay is too long, hunters will just use their own rez and the talent is a lot less attractive. An alternative is a shaman-like self-rez, though it would have to be on the pet bar, not the hunter's. Even then it is yet one more button you have to find room for, so I think the current implementation still might be cooler with some polish. (Source)
• Some changes to Silencing Shot will be made before... the end... (Source)
• We're still going to do a consolidation on the "trap talents" in the Survival tree, and we'll also add some synergy with Bear Trap in there too. (Source)
  

Warrior
Warriors need to be better AE tanks without eclipsing paladins. Thunder Clap is a good place to address that problem. If Shockwave becomes the ultimate tanking ability than we're concerned nobody would want to run a 5-player dungeon without it. That's not the goal. We don't want to hand out Consecrate to every tank, but we want you to be able to tank groups better.

I didn't want to imply that all tanking gear would be strength and stamina with no other stats. But compared to what you are used to, expect more strength and expect strength to benefit you more. Let me also clarify a couple of previous comments. I can't always spend as much effort analyzing every word I type as the community ends up doing, or else I would never get to post. For that I apologize.

I understand the value of defense and Anticipation, though you must agree that volumes have been written about how well defense scales and its value at various points in progression. Tanks have debated about whether it was always worth 5/5 in Anticipation, even if they ultimately concluded that it is. That was the point I garbled.

I also acknowledge that hit and expertise are great threat stats, and expertise can offer a little mitigation to boot. The point I was trying to make is that putting strength on tanking gear solves a lot of problems in the game -- it can improve dps and threat (and mitigation if we build the talents correctly) without us having to worry about whether plate-wearing tanks are already capped in some other stat. Defense means something different for warriors and paladins than it does for death knights, and unless we build different gear for each class we can't count on defense as always being desirable above everything else. The last thing we want is for some classes to feel that they don't have access to the gear to do their jobs properly. Make sense?

Sorry for any confusion. It's never going to bother me when players point out errors I may make in my posting or that we make in our design decisions. It makes the game better. The fact remains that we want warriors to keep tanking. If they aren't there yet, we'll get them there. (Source)

MMO-Champion updates
A few more changes to the site ...

Menu
Added the PvP and Models sections to the menu. We also added The Eye of Eternity and the Chamber of Aspects to the existing Dungeons section.

• PvP - Lake Wintergrasp, Strand of the Ancients
• Models - Weapon Models, NPC Models
  

Dungeon Maps
A map has been added to the Utgarde Keep page !

Class skills / talents lists update
We just did a major update to the skills and talents lists for each class. Most of the bugs should be fixed by now (missing skills, wrong power costs, etc ...). Please report anything wrong in comments !

<center>
<table border="0" align="center" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0">
	<tr bgcolor="#222222">
		<td width="135"><span style="padding-left:5px;">[img]http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/idruids.gif[/img] [b]<font color="#FF7D0A">Druid</font>[/b] </span></td>
		<td width="135"><span style="padding-left:5px;">[img]http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/ihunters.gif[/img] [b]<font color="#ABD473">Hunter</font>[/b] </span></td>
		<td width="135"><span style="padding-left:5px;">[img]http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/images.gif[/img] [b]<font color="#69CCF0">Mage</font>[/b] </span></td>
		<td width="135"><span style="padding-left:5px;">[img]http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/ipaladins.gif[/img] [b]<font color="#F58CBA">Paladin</font>[/b] </span></td>
	</tr>
	<tr bgcolor="#E0E0E0">
		<td>
			<ul>
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=700"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Balance</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=701"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Feral</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=702"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Restoration</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=703"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent List</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?druid"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent Calc.</font>[/b][/url]
		</td>
		<td>
			<ul>
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=620"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Beast Mastery</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=621"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Marksmanship</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=622"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Survival</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=623"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent List</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?hunter"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent Calc.</font>[/b][/url]
		</td>
		<td>
			<ul>
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=670"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Arcane</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=671"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Fire</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=672"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Frost</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=673"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent List</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent Calc.</font>[/b][/url]
		</td>
		<td>
			<ul>
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=610"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Holy</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=611"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Protection</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=612"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Retribution</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=613"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent List</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?paladin"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent Calc.</font>[/b][/url]
		</td>
	</tr>
	<tr bgcolor="#222222">
		<td width="135"><span style="padding-left:5px;">[img]http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/ipriests.gif[/img] [b]<font color="#FFFFFF">Priest</font>[/b] </span></td>
		<td width="135"><span style="padding-left:5px;">[img]http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/irogues.gif[/img] [b]<font color="#FFF569">Rogue</font>[/b] </span></td>
		<td width="135"><span style="padding-left:5px;">[img]http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/ishamans.gif[/img] [b]<font color="#2459FF">Shaman</font>[/b] </span></td>
		<td width="135"><span style="padding-left:5px;">[img]http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/iwarlocks.gif[/img] [b]<font color="#9482CA">Warlock</font>[/b] </span></td>
	</tr>
	<tr bgcolor="#E0E0E0">
		<td>
			<ul>
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=640"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Discipline</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=641"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Holy</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=642"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Shadow</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=643"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent List</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent Calc.</font>[/b][/url]
		</td>
		<td>
			<ul>
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=630"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Assassination</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=631"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Combat</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=632"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Subtlety</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=633"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent List</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?rogue"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent Calc.</font>[/b][/url]
		</td>
		<td>
			<ul>
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=660"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Elemental</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=661"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Enhancement</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=662"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Restoration</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=663"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent List</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?shaman"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent Calc.</font>[/b][/url]
		</td>
		<td>
			<ul>
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=680"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Affliction</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=681"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Demonology</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=682"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Destruction</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=683"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent List</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warlock"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent Calc.</font>[/b][/url]
		</td>
	</tr>
</table>
<table border="0" align="center" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0">
	<tr bgcolor="#222222">
		<td width="135"><span style="padding-left:5px;">[img]http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/iwarriors.gif[/img] [b]<font color="#C79C6E">Warrior</font>[/b] </span></td>
		<td width="135"><span style="padding-left:5px;">[img]http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/icons/ideathknights.gif[/img] [b]<font color="#C41E3A">Death Knight</font>[/b]</td>
	</tr>
	<tr bgcolor="#E0E0E0">
		<td>
			<ul>
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=600"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Arms</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=601"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Fury</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=602"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Protection</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=603"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent List</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warrior"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent Calc.</font>[/b][/url]
		</td>
		<td>
			<ul>
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=650"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Blood</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=651"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Unholy</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=652"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Frost</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=653"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent List</font>[/b][/url]
				[*][url="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight"][b]<font color="#3f8600">Talent Calc.</font>[/b][/url]
		</td>
	</tr>
</table>
</center>

[Hiraeth]

uhm ... i don't know if you might know http://www.wowblues.com/

[Boubouille]

Hosting our own tools is always better. WoWBlues for exemple, has been down for more than a month at the beginning of the summer and there was nothing we could do about it. (Don't get me wrong, it's still a nice site, it's just that having our own tools will let us easily add some features over time, as I said the current version of the tracker on the site is just a beta ^^)

[Deleted]

http://blue.mmo-champion.com its not working for me and i use firefox. Maybe its just me.


Edit: k now it works. Me likes :>

[Boubouille]

Yeah Ninfea, looks like there is a slight problem with the DNS ... Looking into it ...

[bbr]

Devilsaurs and chimeras.
God, I so badly hope we get core hounds >P

Do you have the IP for the blue page?

[Gragge]

hmm, minor thing but, shamans earthliving weapon got the same tooltip on every rank.

[Deleted]

First of all i love it!
Is it possible to filter out the useless blue posts like Random Thread Lock - blue post.



Edit:nvm, at my 1st question, i didn't see http://blue.mmo-champion.com/16/

[zemmi]

I'm not sure if its a bug or whatnot, but Improved Shield Block in warrior talent calculator says minus 5 seconds off shield block.

[evoker]

The blue tracker seems to be down but it was about time it was implemented!

Good job guys

[Sibriast]

In the NPC Models page > (http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=807)

The far left hand image on the second row is just a small image, no hyperlink in it to a larger image like the rest. :-X

[rothomp3]

Devilsaurs and chimeras.
God, I so badly hope we get core hounds >P

Do you have the IP for the blue page?

I'm sure you remember or you wouldn't have mentioned it, but I just wanted to point out that Core Hounds were marked as Tameable back in pre-BC days (when you cast Beast Lore on them). It's just that they were all level 62, and you can't tame anything higher level than you.

Imagine my disappointment when I went into MC at level 65 and saw they'd been made un-tamable

Give us Core Hounds back, you promised!

[timski]

Could you add more information to the RSS feed on the tracker please? I appreciate adding all the information just sucks up your bandwidth, so it need not be everything. But titles alone often do not convey the important "Blue" information, making the RSS rather meaningless.

Oh, and on the topic of RSS: Any chance of getting the main site's RSS feed to display more than just the latest entry? Pretty sure that's easy to do on SMF.

[Marvdatboi]

Damnit don't buff CoE to 36 yards..... Wsg is already bad enough with 5 locks spamming it on you.

[harod]

your bluetracker works fine for me in IE6.

[Zoidie]

I'm not sure if its a bug or whatnot, but Improved Shield Block in warrior talent calculator says minus 5 seconds off shield block.

That's actually correct. If you check warrior protection talents you'll see shield block has been increased to 30 second cooldown

[bug]

Damnit don't buff CoE to 36 yards..... Wsg is already bad enough with 5 locks spamming it on you.

dispell curse, lil'mage

[Scraps]

Haunt is still listed as 2 second cast in the Warlock Talent List. It is now 1.5 seconds.

[Balbaroy]

totemic mastery for shaman is removed i thought for the new talent.

[Marvdatboi]

dispell curse, lil'mage

Im not talking about removing it.... not it will be harder then ever avoiding a lock on a mount. Especially if their holding mid. Lol lil Mage yea ok.