Cataclysm Videos, Articles Update, Blue Posts

[Boubouille]

Cataclysm Videos - Stormwind, Orgrimmar and the Abyssal Maw
People started releasing pretty videos of Cataclysm and I don't think I can do much better than that. The first 3 videos are from TotalBiscuit (CynicalBrit.com) and I might include his videos to more articles depending on the reception of the first three!

Abyssal Maw

Stormwind

Orgrimmar

Zones & Instance Pages Update - Official Previews
I updated some of the Cataclysm pages to include the official previews to add some lore background. I also fixed a couple of layout bugs and tried to improve the readability.

The other good news is, I added Lightbox back to the new instances and new zones pages (the fancy screenshot viewer thing). You should be able to check everything without too much problem now, I will add it to the other pages tomorrow.

New Zones






PvP Zones




Instances - 5-man

Blue posts

Mage (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator)
Spell haste and Fireball / Frostbolt cast time
I think the problem is actually with Early Frost. We just think that e.g. a 3.5 sec Fireball isn't really playable. You probably noticed that the low ranks of Fireball are even much faster, because the spell really isn't usable until the cast time is reduced.

We are going to be much more vigilant about haste getting out of control (from talents and gear) to where GCD issues get to be a problem. Simply making non-haste stats more attractive will help as well. (Source)

Priest (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator)
Discipline
Discipline will still use PW:Shield a lot, but you will probably see less "pre-healing" across the board, because it won't be mana efficient. PW:Shield will probably go back to being more of an emergency button and less of the survivability buff it gets treated as today.

In addition to shielding, Disc will continue to cast Penance a lot, and will probably use Heal and Greater Heal. Flash Heal overlaps in niche a lot with both PW:Shield and Penance, so it may be the least used. (Source)

Rogue (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator)
Combat Tree
Improved Sprint I will grant you doesn't have a lot of use in PvE.

But Improved Kick and Improved Recuperate do. Improved Kick will be of situational use on bosses that can't be silenced, but Improved Recuperate will keep you alive. In a world where healer mana will be much more precious, minimizing wasted mana is going to be a bigger deal.

We're not going to make trees where every point in a dps tree is a dps upgrade. Those are the kinds of talent builds we're trying to get away from, because they remove player choice. We are trying to engineer points in all trees where you have to choose between non-dps talent A and non-dps talent B, because as soon as A or B leads to dps, then the choice goes away. (Source)

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator)
Weapon Enchants
Enchants are technically really complicated spells in WoW, so what we want to do and what we can do aren't always aligned without investing sometimes weeks of programmer time. I say that by way of heavy caveats, because none of this may actually come to pass.

However, what we'd like to do is: A) Restrict DW to Enhancement only, B) Restrict shaman weapon enchants to being unique (meaning no WF / WF or FT / FT), and C) Remove the internal cooldown on Windfury, since once you can only have one, the proc rate won't be a balance problem. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator)
Passive survivability talents
We just think at the end of the day that a warrior needs to look at their his talents and feel like they are making his survivability better. As an example, it's all well and good to have some fun or utility talents in the Disc priest tree, but if there also weren't some bread and butter talents to make you a better healer, Disc priests would feel cheated. Sword and Board is a fun Prot talent, but it doesn't improve your survivability directly in a very noticeable way.

Imagine a new talent that was a 30% chance to lower the cooldown of your Last Stand, or a 30% chance to proc an armor buff on you. It might be an exciting talent, but it could also be really frustrating every time it didn't proc. For the same reason tanks tend to gear for mitigation over random avoidance, they'd probably be really skeptical of a talent that had a chance of lowering their damage taken. There's room for some talents like that, and Critical Block is an example, but a whole tree of them might get frustrating. You might feel like your survivability was out of your control and really at the mercy of encounter specifics or even a random chance for a proc.

Put another way, we want players to have some choices in how they talent, but we don't want the whole tree to feel optional. A Prot warrior who chose to spend no talent points should feel like a really terrible tank, instead of just losing some utility or threat, in the same way an untalented healer should feel like they are sacrificing a lot of healing. Thus we think there is room for a few passive talents, especially for tanks, where having too many non-passive talents risks hurting consistency. (Source)

The MMO Report
This week's MMO Report is the 2nd and last part of their E3 2010 Special.

[Ralth]

Woot, TotalBiscuit ftw

[Deleted]

the Instance in the video looks damn sexeh!

[lillbrorsan]

Nice instance!

[Wolfie of Medivh]

Re: the SW Video - linking to a video from someone who doesn't even know where he's talking about is kind of annoying. It's like Watching Fox News - no information, just mindless speculation.

[ethzero]

I have the feeling this guy literally doesn't do anything other than raiding, because he didn't seem to have the slightest clue what he was talking about.

Wtb videos from people who actually know what they're talking about.

[Ralth]

it shows of the zone nicely, stop being so uptight and enjoy the funny commentary

[Thesmashor]

TotalBiscuit's videos are cool, but as people said, he kinda messed up with the SW one. But keep posting more of his videos Boub, they're good

[Ralth]

I have the feeling this guy literally doesn't do anything other than raiding, because he didn't seem to have the slightest clue what he was talking about.

Wtb videos from people who actually know what they're talking about.

Not alot of those around that also get high quality video

[wolf2006]

The stormwind vid is nice . Just agree with wolfie that he didnt no half about what he was talking about with SW >< . But it does make ya exited about Cata now !! Cant wait for it

[Noomz]

I have the feeling this guy literally doesn't do anything other than raiding, because he didn't seem to have the slightest clue what he was talking about.

Wtb videos from people who actually know what they're talking about.

I'd like to add to this that this guy has the most annoying, strangle-inducing voice ever. I can't stand listening to him.

Would want someone that actually cares and knows something to do videos instead, that has a voice that is more pleasant to listen to then this scratching posh guy.

[Marlamin]

Those videos are awesome. TotalBiscuit always A++

[johnq]

To all people who are saying he don't know what hes on about, he does say 2/3 times that he has rarely ever come to Stormwind, since he plays horde, so yea.. TB is awesome and so are his podcasts/videos

[Ralth]

Noomz, Totalbiscuit is one of the most wellknown and wellrespected starcraft shoutcaster and wow-news presenter online

[Maagina]

That dude has no idea what he is talking about on that Stormwind vid...

[Solendrys]

I'd like to add to this that this guy has the most annoying, strangle-inducing voice ever. I can't stand listening to him.

Would want someone that actually cares and knows something to do videos instead, that has a voice that is more pleasant to listen to then this scratching posh guy.

You obviously haven't heard any of TB's other stuff.

[johnq]

That dude has no idea what he is talking about on that Stormwind vid...

Well its not like he hides that fact.

[Glisern]

Do more with TotalBiscuit. awesome videos to watch..... okey, I'll admit it, only about halfway through he first one, but really enjoyable watching the action and listening to him

[Malthurius]

I don't like the guys from Jumpgate on the MMO Report belittling other MMOs. Maybe it's just me, but that's what it sounded like.

[Senbon]

God thats one sweet looking instance