ome Horde are still not satisfied, saying that at least one of those mounts should be Epic to truly equalize numbers, but for now, there’s at least more easy mounts to get toward the Red Dragonhawk (Which is honestly a lot cooler looking than the silly blue one Alliance get, seriously).

Rumors have also been persisting over the past few days that the Horde will finally be getting an Un’goro Ravasaur as a counterpart to the Winterspring Frostsaber for Alliance. This has been compounded by the discovery of a Venomhide Ravasaur mount and a Ravasaur related quest in the 3.1 PTR files. However, Mor’vek himself seems to be unaccessible, and Zarhym has recently gone on record as saying there will not be a Ravasaur Mount in 3.1. It seems, though, that they’re at least working toward the idea. Maybe we’ll see one in 3.2.

Here’s one more bonus to accompany that whole mounts can swim thing in 3.1: An actual swimming mount. In 3.1, Fishers will be able to fish up a new mount from Northrend fishing schools. As to the identity of the mount, a Coralsheel Turtle mount has been spotted in the 3.1 PTR files, and Zarhym has confirmed that it’s the real deal. Between this and the aforementioned fishing dailies, it is a very nice time to be a fisher in 3.1.

The comments section set me straight last week. Fire Mages are not happy with Blizzard’s attempt at improving their survivability in PvP. You guys were brutally frank in your comments, and I have to admit that I see your point. Nobody likes dying, but as a Fire Mage you sort of expect it, similar to the way nobody likes getting tackled, but as a football player you know it comes with the territory. All Fire Mages want is to be able to dish out an acceptable amount of pain before they explode. In fact, a lot of you proposed the idea of allowing Fire Mages to literally explode upon death, making killing one a dangerous proposition. Several of you commented that this was a Fire Mage’s idea of survivability, to die, but leave a smoking crater behind. Seriously, this is an idea I can get behind.I tried my best to be optimistic last week, to look at the changes to Fiery Payback and Impact (especially Impact) as semi-good things. The Fiery Payback-disarm effect will be marginally positive, I told myself, and at the very least, Impact being triggered by Fire Blast will make the spell less random and more controllable, right? We Mages get such a reputation for being whiners that I try to steer clear of pessimism as much as a can just to avoid being lumped in with that lame generalization. I try, and most of the time I fail, but I award myself an “A” for effort.

Here’s the thing, though: If you weren’t happy with the changes last week, you really aren’t going to like the latest PTR build. Follow me through the break and we’ll talk ourselves through the changes. I’ll try to keep the tears to a minimum.

One last note

I don’t know if you saw this recent Ghostcrawler thread on the official forums in which he commented on the fact that Blizzard still plans to make spirit a useful stat for Mages, but if you didn’t, you owe it to yourself to read through it. Go ahead…I’ll wait.

Okay, do any of you have any idea what he’s getting at here? Here’s what I get from his posts:

Spirit becoming “more useful” is still in the plan. This does not mean that it will give us spellpower, like it does with Boomkin, Shadow Priests, and Warlocks. Blizzard wants Mages who avoid spirit and Mages who don’t to be about equal in regards to DPS. Spirit can’t provide more DPS and more regen, or else it becomes “godly.” Yes, indeed.
So what, in the name of all that is good and pure, do they plan to do with spirit? “Useful” does not equal more damage, apparently. So…for a DPS class, what does “useful” equal? More mana regen? But according to Ghostcrawler’s posts, not having to worry about mana regen would be “god mode.” I don’t understand. Read the rest of this entry »

How would she react encountering her first ninja looter? The response is classic. One Rogue’s Journey continues their Friday Morning AddOn series, this time with a movie explaining ag_UnitFrames. Big Hit Box, a blog focusing on posts for all melee DPS specs, has a new post up on macros for PVE Enhancement Shamans. Darraxus the Warrior has laid down the Commandments of Pugging. He only lists six, but they’re enough to make the difference between a succesful run and another nightmare PuG.. Wulf’s Warcraft Weblog has been dreaming of a Wolf Spirit Beast to tame. So they made one. Check out their concept art. The Master’s Call blog has a guide on Gearing For Raids for Newbies. They’re just getting into raiding and sharing what they are learning in a series of posts. Gnomeaggedon shares his views on Why WoW Is Like Bringing Up Kids. From crowd control to rolling restarts to bear form. Head on over and add your own suggestion. Miss Elf is considering the pros and cons and introducing her mother-in-law to WoW.

Opponent History is an easy to read rundown of all teams a team has played, displaying how many times both teams have met, including their win-loss records against each other. The listing also shows a team’s winning percentage against a particular opponent, as well as the net gains in ratings. Match Reports are a snapshot of a specific match, revealing data such as what Arena map the match occurred in, the date and time, and how long the game lasted. Even data such as Killing Blows, damage done and taken, and healing done and taken are all in there.

It’s an incredibly robust set of tools that Arena enthusiasts are sure to take advantage of and enjoy looking through. Even without actually seeing entire matches played, there’s enough data to allow players to visualize them and even analyze a team. Are some comps really weaker against others? Do some comps perform better in one map and not another?

Blizzard has apparently been tracking a lot of data under the hood for some time, as all the matches of Season 5 are available for viewing.

The new tools are incredibly powerful, interesting, and intuitive, allowing players to look through a teams performance over the course of a season. The Match History tool represents matches in a graph form, which players can toggle to show selected periods of time. It shows which opponents a team faced, how much ratings were gained or lost, the average ratings change during the selected period, and even when and what time the matches were played. There’s just so much data available, players can conceivably spend lots of time just studying team histories.

Kind of puts me in a panic, actually. Patch 3.1 doesn’t seem like it’s quite ready yet, and even though I know there’ll be quite a bit of change from now until it goes live, there are some things in the patch now that don’t quite work for me. A number of talents don’t quite have the right polish, for one. That said, Blizzard has been working very fast lately so I wouldn’t be surprised if all this gets straightened out before the patch goes live. For today, though, let’s pretend Patch 3.1 is about to go live. What would you change? What stuff would you still like to see? It looks like an exciting patch, so what are you looking forward to (or dreading) the most?

Patch 3.1 isn’t out yet and probably won’t be for a little bit longer. But with the background downloader already active and the official PTR patch notes updated once again, it seems much closer than ever. Testing of the bosses are going pretty smoothly, and it’s likely that the public won’t get to test the final bosses of Ulduar. That means Blizzard has gotten quite a bit of data about the boss fights, so we’re certain to see some differences between the PTRs and when they go live.

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, double-mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! To misquote Terry Pratchett, if you put a big red button somewhere in Azeroth with a huge painted sign over it saying “END OF THE WORLD SWITCH - DO NOT PRESS!”, the paint wouldn’t even have time to dry before you’d have three gnomes arguing about who gets to hit it first. In this shot, the gnomish curiousity of Crazyazell of <The Silver Wind Knights> on Bronzebeard might be producing fatal results, as she prepares to pilot her flying machine into the top of the Nexus. There’s a good reason why Death Knights need to stay away from the light, Azell!

The dialogue and action is a little awkward. The voice acting and scripting all seem in earnest, and the heart’s in the right place, but there are a few too many tropes and cliches scattered through the character interaction. I chalk this up to this being UltraViolet’s first piece. Her pacing, plot plan, and basic flow all seem pretty good. She just needs some more time working with her actors, and putting pen to paper, to get away from some of the easy-fallbacks for dialogue. I’m eager to see how the plot develops for Chapter 2, given the promise I see in this installment.

As the story goes, there’s been a recent rash of deaths in Elwynn Forest. (Presumably, not Hogger’s fault.) All the victims are young women, lacking any tell-tale signs of how their deaths may have occured. The story’s focused on a young barmaid named Elane, whose greatest concern in life is dodging every bit of work that comes her way. Hijinks ensue, including the appearance of a mysterious figure.

The first thing I want to say about UltraViolet’s work is that I’m strongly encouraged that the main character isn’t a “Mary Sue.” If you’re not familiar with the term, a “Mary Sue” is an escapist character written by an author. The character is usually the most awesome, coolest thing ever. (This is a criticism often applied to Bella in the Twilight series.) By virtue of Elane’s faults and characterization, I’m pretty sure Elane isn’t serving as a prop for UltraViolet’s fantasies, and that gives me a lot of hope for the continuing series.

Blizzard missed out in the actual game nominations — for best PC game, the expansion was overshadowed by Fallout 3, Crysis Warhead, Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria, and Left 4 Dead. You can argue amongst yourselves whether that’s justified or not. But we’re sure Blizzard is happy with the animation nomination anyway — their competition there is Turbo Dogs, so they’ll probably do fine when the awards are announced on April 25th.

Throw another nomination on the list for Wrath of the Lich King — Blizzard’s cinematic team has been nominated for an Elan award for the WotLK cinematic in the category of Best Animated Short Subject. And the nom is well deserved: while the trailer broke with the tradition of showing the various races and classes of Warcraft doing battle with each other, Blizzard’s choice to instead recap the story of Arthas and the Lich King while he summoned Sindragosa worked well and looked amazing.

   To be frank, Nordrassil Harness is a PvP and soloing bonus and nothing more. Sure, you could whip out that raid-saving spot heal, but odds are you’re going to be too focused on doing your job (DPS) to notice someone moments away from death in time to heal them before the actual healers do. And even if you do get heal off first, you’re going to heal what, maybe 1800 if you specced Nurturing Instinct? Odds are, if you really need to pop out to help the healers out, you’re going to need to throw more than one spell, and ultimately, all this bonus does is cuts half of second off of the effective casting time for Re-growth, since the global cool-down delays you for 1.5 of the 2 seconds you thought you just saved.
   In short, T4’s bonuses are made of epic win. T5’s bonuses are the dregs from the bottom of Blizzard’s Tea (though the swipe damage boost is a rather tasty looking dreg).  Crit immunity was something only the ignorant Ferals strove for before Survival of the Fittest. Raid viability was when your healing set was good enough to overcome the fact that your spec sucked. And while it didn’t set in for a while, those who are fortunate enough to at least be killing Prince Malchezaar on a regular basis got one more system shock: Feral Set Bonuses.
   It is a fact that Tier 4 has some extremely good set bonuses on it, bonuses which quite frankly dwarf T5 and T6. This, unfortunately, means it is very hard for us to upgrade beyond our first feral set into the higher tiers (mind you, for some of us, there are other conditions keeping us from Tier 6 gear as well). And we want to take a look at our raid set bonuses, from the ungodly two-piece T4 bonus for cats, to the utterly craptacular two-piece T5 bonus.
   Malore Harness is such a strong cat bonus that many people keep two pieces of tier four all the way up to four pieces tier six. It should because it’s essentially a second Omen of Clarity for Feral Druids. At a procrate of 4% per hit, combined with an average of about 5 attacks every 4 seconds in catform, the set bonus alone will give the average cat Druid 1-2 more shreds per minute, which could easily yield an extra 20-30 DPS! Bears don’t necessarily get as much benefit from this, getting only about 2 procs per minute, but that should still be enough for one more maul.
   Four-piece Bonus is a fairly decent buff for catform which give us about 80 attack power with raid buffs. But let’s face it, strength as a set bonus is kind of boring. Though, for bears that 1400 armor is nice. It makes sure that set bonus is not affected by the bear modifier. Much like the two piece bonus for cats, bears hold on to their four piece malorne bonus until they start picking up T6 pieces. However, while this is a significant chunk of armor, the overall stat upgrades on T5 can easily overtake the benefit of this bonus, especially when you factor in T5 bonuses.

Bear is the first form you will obtain when you hit level 10. After you switch into and out of the form about a dozen times immediately after you get it, and discover the “Bear Dance,” you’ll want to get back to leveling. This is a tanking form which means that you have the ability to take a beating really well but you are not really all that great at dealing damage. Your job as a tank is to get in the face of an enemy and keep them focused on hitting you rather than other members of your group. While you’re getting beaten on someone else is doing the serious damage to the enemy and, if you’re really lucky, someone might be healing you as well. For the first ten levels of Bear, you’ll want to focus on strength and stamina for stats. Strength lets you hit hard, gives a higher attack power which bumps your threat level. The higher your threat level, the more enemies want to beat the crap out of you rather than someone else in your group and that is a good thing.
   Feral Druid is your choice at the beginning. However, a common approach is to put your first talent points into Ferocity, Savage Fury and Feral Instinct. By the time, this way you hit level 20 and gain your cat form you will already have an increase in damage and a better prowl waiting for you. Who wouldn’t want to play as Bears, Cheetahs, Puma and Lion looking things, a Tree, Moonkins, a wacky sea lion swimming form and even birds? So you run off and roll yourself one and right away you notice two things. One is that you can not turn into anything cool at all and another is that you have got is a couple crappy little offensive spells. Many players quit the class before they even get to Cat and miss out all the fun. You should be patient and get to Cat form before you made a decision to dump the class.
   For some players, it is frustrating to start out a Feral Druid. So here want to tell of a simple guide to get you from a wimpy new Druid running around a field with a bent stick to a stealthy Cat shredding everything in its path. The trick is to get to your Cat Form as fast as possible. Once you get there, at level twenty, the real damage begins. So let’s get down to it right now. 
   It has nothing to do with the Feral Druid build at all from level 1 to 9. You’ve got some spells to attack with, Root and some healing. Blast through these levels quickly by Moonfiring and Wrathing the heck out of everything and keeping yourself healed. It is important for you to get the timing of your spells down as you will use these extensively even as a Feral Druid. Practice using and watching your Moonfire Damage over Time ticker. As you gain more of these types of spells like Faerie Fire, Insect Swarm, Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, you’ll want to be aware of the timers and know when you need to refresh these spells, even as a Feral Druid. Practice using Root to Crowd Control enemies as this will be part of your role on occasion, especially when you earn the spell Cyclone later on.