WoW Insider interviews Tom Chilton on Patch 3.1

Now this is by no means the first time we've interviewed World of Warcraft's Lead Developer Tom Chilton (aka Kalgan) but we though with the recent release of Patch 3.1, this would be the perfect time to sit down with him and get the 411 on Blizzard's plans for their latest patch.

WoW Insider: Blizzard seem to be treating each major patch as more of a mini expansion, what are the reasons for this?

Tom Chilton: I would say the biggest reason is because we're always pushing ourselves to do as much as we can in every patch. We're never really satisfied with what we have in the patch versus what we didn't have. Maybe the developers get a little out of control - but in a good way as that's good for players. More than anything else we want to make sure that in a patch we have content for everyone.

We feel like one of the things we didn't do so well in the past was to deliver content for everyone, we would deliver content for different parts of the player base at any given time like a 25-person raid or a 10-person raid or here's a new battleground, back in the day of Arathi Basin. However we didn't really hit everyone at the same time so we're trying harder to do that while at the same time maintain our pace of Expansions ... our blindingly rapid pace of Expansions.

Why did you decide to implement the Argent Tournament?

The Argent Tournament we saw primarily as a more Azerothian style event. We've got a lot of world events, like in-game holidays, at this point but we're going to continue to improve those and refine them and we will add more of them over time. But we wanted to spend a little more time doing something which was a little more Azeroth.

So we built the Argent Tournament and we knew that with a lot of our world events, we wanted them to be very solo friendly, very casual player friendly but we didn't want it to feel like another set of daily quests that were the same as any other daily quests people where already doing. We wanted to make sure the activity felt a little bit different and kind of new and fresh so that was one of the reasons behind doing the Argent Tournament the way we did and it's part of how we came to the idea of doing jousting in-game.

Does the Tournament have a role to play in Wrath or it is just a bit of fun in Icecrown?

Well it's certainly going to be carried on in 3.2 as we continue to expand the Argent Tournament. How much farther it goes beyond that is hard to say at this point.

How do you maintain a balance between changing long-standing game play mechanics (for example reducing hearthstone cooldown to 30 minutes or adding dual specs) and not giving the players everything they want?

Well, we have this very thick skin, maintained over a very long period of time! I guess in some ways our design philosophies have become less hard core over time or at least we're finding ways to figure out what 'hard core' really means versus when it's just annoying. There are a lot of things about world travel and talents ... philosophies which we've decided are just not friendly enough to the player.

When we developed them, we were being more friendly to the player than any other game out there and we felt like, you know, it's probably even more restrictive than it needs to be. The hearthstone decision itself, part of that is because for a long time in the game there's been a bug called ghetto-hearthing where you can effectively hearthstone by going into an instance and leave the party.

Well. we were fixing that and as a side effect of our ability to queue for battlegrounds from anywhere, because it needs to return you to the place you where when you came out of the battleground, so the logic the instances use to decide where to put you when you come out is smarter than it used to be. It seemed like it was almost by virtue that we got that bug fixed but we felt like players were really used to being able to go to Dalaran or Stormwind or wherever their hearthstone is set a lot more often than we originally anticipated. We wanted to make sure that the game suddenly didn't feel a lot more cumbersome because of that bug fix.

What can you say about patch 3.2 and beyond?

Well, I guess I can tell you there's a battleground and some more stuff in the Argent Crusade! I would say the biggest thing would actually be the [additional content coming to the] Argent Tournament itself so that would be one of those things to look towards. Also, inevitably, there's going to be Icecrown Citadel and the confrontation with Arthas further down the line.

Why has it taken so long to implement something so simple as having mounts swim in water? Is this linked to some thing bigger or just a much-needed fix.

Yeah, that's another one of those evolving kind of philosophies, but we also got some extra time to animate those mounts so it looks like they're actually able to swim. We always found it really kind of annoying that you'd run through a puddle of water that was knee-deep and be dismounted. I think it's one of those polish things that probably would have been better if the game had always been like that, but now was the time for us to be able to do it.

Are you still working on the new dances and druid forms promised way back?

Yep, we still have animators working away on that.

Are you surprised by the success of Wrath and the popularity of new content, like the Death Knight class and Wintergrasp?

I guess yes and no. The expansion, as a whole, we all had a really good feeling about right from the start. We felt like, you know, it was a great package that it was going to be really feature rich. We had high expectations for ourselves and it would be unfair to say that we didn't expect it to do well.

At the same time, it's humbling how strong a response it's gotten from the fans. Also I'm very pleased to how the introduction to the new class has gone. There was a lot of concern, both internally and by the player base, that adding a new class could potentially mess up the game and we tried to make sure we were diligent about paying attention to things which could lead to problems for the game.

I guess my feelings about Wintergrasp is more mixed, I think that in some ways it is extremely cool and it has gotten us some of that feel that we wanted out of world PvP. On the downside, it's so difficult for us to design around an unknown number of players so part of the disappointment is that we're still struggling to support the number of players that participate.

At times, during prime time on the bigger servers, it can really slow down quite a bit and we don't feel like that's an acceptable play environment situation.

In the wake of the success of Death Knights, are you going consider introducing more Hero classes?

It's definitely very possible that we'll do that in the future. Certainly we view that Death Knights have been a success. We do feel that there's still a limited number of classes we can introduce to the game before the classes start becoming more of the same. We're being very careful not to go too far too quickly, we want to make sure we pace ourselves and that we make really smart choices about when and how we do that.

Why introduce dual specs? How do you think these will change one player's versatility?

Well, I guess never say never, I mean a couple of years ago, I couldn't imagine we'd ever do dual spec. We always wanted the talents to feel like very meaningful choices to players and that there wouldn't be infinite flexibility, at least not without a cost. At the same time, the way the game has involved and players participate in multiple area of the end-game and the way in which those end-games are totally different, we're talking about raiding versus PvP or solo daily quest farming and being the healer in your raid. All those different ways in which people play the game, it really just got to the point where we felt like it was a necessity. It wasn't something we could turn a blind eye toward anymore.

As far as tri-spec goes, I hope not! From a design perspective, just because I still want to maintain as much integrity as I can regarding how having a spec and choosing what you're going to do is important. Also the UI gets more and more cumbersome and the game gets more complex. Again, from a design standpoint, the game begins to feel like you have three specs, why not just have all the talents? Once you have everything, it stops being about character customization, which is what it was always intended to be.

Is there a feature in another MMO that you admire and would like to see in WoW?

Sure! Right now, for example, we don't have a housing system. Other MMOs have it and it's a system that we've talked about since before the launch of the original WoW. We've talked about housing and how we'd do it and how it might work for at least five years.

Is it something you're actively working on?

No, we're not working on right now, but it's incredibly complex to do right and we're not sure yet if it's going to be the right thing for WoW in the long run. It has major implications for the game itself and again I wouldn't go out of my way and say never but it's not on the immediately of things to do.

Well thanks for taking the time to chat to us.

My pleasure.

Mutant turtles are greater than boys in spandex

On this Monday morning I have come to realize one important thing: a picture is worth a thousand words.

Clearly, TMNT > Power Rangers. For shame Alex, for shame!

Romir asked...

"I just switched my off spec for my Death Knight to a tank spec. However I've never really tanked before, what would be the best heroic to go into to learn to tank? I have an uncrittable set I got from raids/off-spec rolls. I know most of the dungeons, I just need practice. Which would be best to start in?"

Please don't start in a heroic. You want to take baby steps. First, go out to someplace and see that you can successfully control multiple mobs. Make sure that you have the basic mechanics down. After you're confident you can keep things focused on you, then head into a low-80 non-heroic instance. Hell, you might even consider doing a few rounds of regular Violet Hold. Get to know what it's like to be a tank and have four other members not pay any attention to what you need to do.

After you've done some easy 80 tanking instances, head into regular CoT: Strat. Don't worry about doing a speed run in regular, just try to keep a brisk pace and don't die. You'll be challenged the first few times to keep the mobs away from your healer – but that's part of the game.

Once you have regular CoT: Strat under your belt to the point where you can run through it lightning fast, run your first heroic. Something like Utgarde Keep or Utgarde Pinnacle is good for a new tank. It's important to go with a guild group to your first few heroics, because you're going to wipe a lot as a new tank – no matter your gear.

Overall, just be calm and stay alert. You'll do great!

Popesicle asked...

"Is it possible to change our guild's name?"

Nope. Asking or expecting that this feature would be implemented is like expecting sliced bread out of a bag of bread.

A bunch of you asked...

"Where are the Wolvar and oracle orphans as data-mined by MMO Champion? Did they make an appearance anywhere?"

We haven't seen them, and have no idea where you can get them. As far as we can tell, no one else does either. Remember that data-mined data is just that, it's not necessarily a reflection of what is available in game.

Peacebone asked...

"Is there any particular reason why Blizzard and Wildstorm think we want to read about Varian every month in the Warcraft comics? When can I expect for the comics to become... you know... good?"

While I don't think the Blizzard based comic books are the pinnacle of comics, I don't think they're necessarily bad either. And as for why they keep talking about Varian, well, that's because you keep buying them.

(PS Alex: I'm not in Switzerland, I'm in Amsterdam.)

Guide: BBB's tips for a new tank

Starting to tank is scary. During BC I leveled from 40 through 69 as a Balance Druid, and then discovered that a tank couldn't be pugged for love or money once you hit the later portion of Outland on my realm. I'd picked up some feral gear along the way and decided to give tanking a shot, but then spent my first afternoon in the trenches being a nervous wreck after losing aggro to impatient DPS, aggroing extra mobs by charging into pulls instead of LOSing them, and taking a ridiculous amount of damage. The feeling of being constantly judged by your group members isn't a pleasant sensation, but more maddening was the knowledge that certain things beyond your control -- mob stuns, lazy or trigger-happy DPS, an inattentive healer, or something as simple as a missed Mangle -- could make you look worse than you actually were.

That's why I like a recent blog post by our own Big Bear Butt on "Tips for the New Tank," which addresses not only that but also a number of pitfalls to which new tanks are prone. I particularly agree with his assertion that you should never start a boss event assuming that everyone in the group is on the same page, because someone who's not sure what they're doing can and often will cause issues for you without realizing it. It's a great guide for a new tank that gives a nod to the "feeling judged" syndrome mentioned here, and with so many players returning to their tanking trees or trying Death Knights in Wrath, I recommend it for anyone interested in the job.

We won't see many more class changes in Wrath of the Lich King

So here's some news that'll probably make you feel good if you're okay with your class and just want to grab consistent set of talent specs and go at it, but may get you a little down if you still dislike where your class is. Ghostcrawler said yesterday that he believes there won't be many drastic class changes. In fact, he says, most of the 3.1 class changes were meant to compensate for or tinker with the changes made in 3.0 or to further tweak the classes that got the largest amount of overhaul.

On the plus side, these means that hopefully the current 3.1 talent builds are more or less set, so you don't have to worry too much about respecing based on major changes to class. On the other hand, if you don't like where your class or favorite talent tree is right now, you may be in trouble.

That said, Ghostcrawler hasn't ruled out further changes, and has all but said that there will probably be numbers adjustments. So what we can probably take from this is, at the least, that the basic mechanics and rotations for every class and talent spec are more or less set, at least until someone theorycrafts something different. This also hopefully means that they can focus on adding more content for us to use all our class mechanics on in future patches.

But for now, I hope you like what you have, because it may be all you're getting.

A Patch 3.1 talent build cookie platter for Death Knights

So now that Patch 3.1 is underway, the basic cookie cutter tank and DPS builds have begun emerging. Any imagine nerfs really have slown us down in any major way, and with dual specs in, we're doing better than ever on the whole versatility front. In recognition of this, let's give it to you straight, no chaser. Here's a handful of cookie cutter DPS and Tank builds for each tree to get you on the right path to DPS or tanking dominance in Patch 3.1, or both if you've dropped that 1000 gold. All of these builds also included recommended glyphs at the link as well.

DPS

Unholy: This 0/10/61 DPS build is one of the top competitors for DPS and the one I'm personally sporting. While it may seem like sacrilige not to head into the Blood tree, the Unholy tree does enough shadow damage that Black Ice's new shadow damage multiplier wins out. In addition, having 130 runic power comes in handy when you're trying to unleash a Gargoyle and still have enough leftover for Unholy Blight and a couple Death Coils. In this build, you get Frost Fever and Blood Plague up, then keep the Scourge and Blood Strikes coming for as long as your glyphs keep refreshing the diseases, adding your runic power dumps as needful. One note of caution on this build: You'll be flying without Subversion, so you'll want to make sure you're aware of the extra threat.

Blood: Blood was the redheaded stepchild of the Death Knight trees in 3.0 as far as imagined effectiveness went, but that really shouldn't be true in 3.1 Blood easily keeps pace with Unholy in the DPS department. Here's one of the more popular Blood/Unholy builds. This build focuses a good amount on heavy-hitting physical damage, so armor penetration becomes surprisingly useful in this build. Army of the Dead in the Unholy tree makes the disposable Ghoul a little more effective. The rotation should be more or less like Unholy, but use Death Strike for your Frost/Unholy rune strie, replace Gargoyle with Dancing Rune Weapon, and replace Blood Strike with Heart Strike. If you're afraid of losing AE potential with this build, remember that Blood Boil can hit undiseased targets now, and Blood talents have some pretty hefty buffs to that ability.

Frost: Frost, especially 2-handed Frost, continues to be somewhat of the dark horse DPS build. Not many Death Knights consider it, but it still manages to do very respectable DPS. 2-handed Frost DPS sometimes seems to me like it could be called the class' best kept secret. This build is one the favorites for solid 2-handed Frost DPS. You'll actually focus on churning out Obliterates with this build. Save the Howling Blasts for AE DPS or Rime procs - which you'll have a decent amount of, since you'll be using obliterate as fast as you can churn out the runes for it. You'll be using Frost Strike for your rune dumps, of course. This build also includes Improved Icy Talons for a little grouping love.

Tanking

Frost: Frost remains the stereotypical tank build, as it seems a lot of people failed to get the message that Blizzard abandoned the Frost is tank thing back before the Wrath Beta. That said, it's definitely a more than passable tank tree. Here's a Frost Build to try out when tanking. Howling Blast is here to help with AE threat grabbing, and it goes into the Unholy far enough to grab some extra help for Death and Decay. It's worth noting that a lot of people like grabbing Bladed Armor for extra threat in this build. If you do this, it'll probably best to take the points out of 2-handed weapon specialization and Acclimation.

Unholy: I'm still an Unholy fiend myself, so this is the tank build I'm using too. Even with repeated nerfs to Bone Shield, Unholy remains a very respectable tank tree. Try this build on for size. It focuses primarily on picking up all the delicious magic absorption and threat goodies in the Unholy Tree, leaving Blood and Frost for the first tier defensive abilities. Improved Icy Touch counts here too, the extra slow means fewer hits against you. Like Frost above, a lot of people like to take Bladed Armor for the extra threat. If you decide to go that route, Taking points out of Virulence and reducing Wandering Plague to 1 point is probably your best bet.

Blood: Yes, the Blood Tree can tank. For a while, a lot of Death Knights swore by a Blood build to tank 3-drake Sartharion. But even though Sarth is yesterday's news, you can still get some very respectable mileage from Blood Tanking. This build gives you the all of basic defensive cooldowns and abilities of the Blood Tree, a lot of strong physical-based single target threat, and some AE threat in the form of Heart Strike, Bloody Strikes, and Morbidity.

But where is Dual Wielding?

Dual Wielding is still sort of a playstyle in flux right now, but some Death Knights are still plugging along looking for ways to use it in 3.1. This thread on Elitist Jerks suggests a few ideas, but most of them assume you have some pretty sweet raid gear and are on track to get more.

Myself, I'd wait for 3.2 to try dual wielding again, once we see what the devs have in store. Some people are claiming it should be as simple as converting weapon strikes to hit with both weapons. I'm pretty sure this would be the exact wrong way to go about it, since it would immediately remove the major reason 2-handers have even been able to stay head of dual wielding in the first place. Without the weapon strike edge, Death Knight 2-handers stand a very good chance of going the way of Enhancement Shaman 2-handers.

But anyhow, 3.2 is a ways away. For now, Take any combination of the builds I have linked above, and go forth and conquer. New class or nerfed class or whatever, Death Knights are still plenty enjoyable in 3.1, and they're even more enjoyable with a good build.

Varian Wrynn is Right

Among WoW players these days, it seems to be a popular opinion that King Varian Wrynn is a narrow minded short-sighted bigot who will lead the Alliance to ruin. This is an easy opinion to have, since he does show a considerable amount of anger at times when dealing with the Horde, and it's long been the general opinion that "no-one is truly evil" in the Horde and Alliance conflict. This is even the opinion of some of my fellow writers.

Here's my problem with this: The underlying causes of Varian Wrynn's anger are all unconditionally justified. Varian Wrynn is not angry at the Horde because of a series of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. He's been witness to or victim of multiple wrongdoings and atrocities perpetuated by the Horde time and time again, both the new Horde and the Old. Most, if not all of these times, the wrongdoings have been the result of outright maliciousness on the part of the Horde or its members, and in the case the so-called "peaceful" New Horde, there's been no sign whatsoever that Thrall is punishing or disciplining the perpetrators of these acts, and at the least, it is clear that he is not properly dealing with the consequences.

Regarding the First Fall of Stormwind

The first fall of Stormwind occurred when Varian Wrynn was a young man. So this was Varian's first encounter with the Orcs. Now mind you, this Orcish Horde had no justification for the war. They were not being driven from land, they were not starving or lost, nor were they addressing some ancient affront by the Human race. No, these Orcs were foreign invaders from another dimension

Consider, also, how they eventually razed Stormwind. They were able to do so by way of Garona, a Half-Orc assassin acting on behalf of the Horde. So Varian not only saw that the Orcish Army was a mindlessly violent army bent on the destruction of the human race, but that the one Orc who might have been different, the one Orc who appeared to have befriended humanity and proven that not how all Orcs were mindless beasts, betrayed them and proved herself an enemy to humanity by murdering Varian's beloved Father.

Horde apologists will tell you that Garona was acting under mind control. There's two problems with this. First, Varian has no real way of knowing Garona was mind-controlled at the time. All he knows is that an Orc gained the trust and friendship of his father, then used it to betray and murder him, causing the downfall of his kingdom and very nearly the downfall of all humanity. Secondly, Garona was still under the control of the Shadow Council, which was at the time solely an Orcish organization and the de facto leadership of the Horde. Either way, it was the Horde who killed his father and nearly wiped out his people.

On Varian's loss of his second father and Humanity's loss of their greatest Hero

Now, consider the aftermath of this incident. It was Anduin Lothar who saved what remained of Stormwind's people after the razing. He spirited Varian away to Lordaeron along with the rest of the survivors. Once in Stormwind, he replaced Llane as Varian's father figure and mentor, and worked with King Tereneas to establish the Alliance, the force that became the only hope of humans, dwarves, and elves against the Orcish Horde.

And yet, Anduin Lothar was killed in cold blood by the Orcs during their attempt to finish what they had started at Stormwind, killed by Orgrim Doomhammer himself.

Horde Apologists will argue that Orgrim Doomhammer was not under the influence of the Burning Legion, and that he was doing it in self-defense, but again, there's problems with those who insist on this. First, while Orgrim was a friend of Durotan and supposedly had heeded his warning that Blackhand and Gul'dan did not have the Horde's best interests in mind, he still allowed Gul'dan to live, employed his necromancers and the Death Knights in battle, and continued the Horde's genocidal campaign against the the Humans. This all strongly implies that Orgrim was more interested in his own personal power, or at least the dominance of the Orcs, rather than doing what was right.

Regardless, whether Orgrim was under the control of the Burning Legion or not, he was still acting as an enemy of the Alliance. In addition, while the forces of the Alliance did have the Horde pinned down at Blackrock Spire, there was no attempt by Doomhammer to parlay. Instead, he went out to kill.

A Note should be made here that in the original events of Warcraft II, Lothar came to Blackrock under a flag of truce to offer terms of surrender to Orgrim, but was ambushed and killed in Cold Blood by Orgrim's order. A retcon changed this to put Lothar and Orgrim in single combat, but the basic crimes of Orgrim remain, and later depictions of the battle (for example, in the d20 Warcraft games player's guides) have left the circumstances of the single combat murky enough that an ambush or deliberate drawing out of Lothar on the part of Orgrim may have still happened.

Regardless of the exact cause of Lothar's death, the point remains that Orgrim, no matter what his ultimate loyalties, continued the genocidal campaign of the Horde upon the Humans, Dwarves, and High Elves, and killed Anduin Lothar in the process. The Horde killed Humanity's greatest hero and Varian's mentor and second father during an unjust war of genocide against Varian's people, the people he was sworn to protect as King. Thus, the injustices perpetrated against Varian by the Horde continue to stack to unbelievable, unwieldy heights.

On the formation of the New Horde and their attitude toward the Alliance

Horde apologists will argue that all of these problems are the Old Horde, and that the New Horde should be treated as a new, separate entity. Once again, there are very definite problems with this view. Not only are most of the Orcs that make up the current Horde the same Orcs who were the rank and file and leaders of the Old Horde, the fact remains that the New Horde is still using many of the trappings and philosophies of the Old Horde, and is more and more committing new violent acts of their own.

To start with, on the most basic of levels, Thrall continues to use symbology and symbols for the Horde that are, in Human experience, most clearly and basically connected with the Old Horde that was attempting to wipe out the free peoples of Azeroth.

The very title "Warchief" is said to be an ancient title of the Orcs. However, current lore suggests that the title had fallen out of use, and was only taken up again by Rend Blackhand as a tool by Gul'dan to unite the clans as an army of darkness and death. Orgrim Doomhammer took over the title, but continued to use it as the head of a genocidal army. Thrall now claims the title, but the fact remains that, ancestral ties or not, it has been most recently used as a tool of the Burning Legion, only very vaguely tied in to the heritage of an old line of Warchiefs that may or may not have existed, a history that Thrall, as of yet, shows few signs of trying to uncover. When Thrall uses the title Warchief, it is most clearly being used to evoke the power and authority of Orgrim Doomhammer.

Yes, Thrall and the Horde still revere Orgrim Doomhammer, the bloody Warchief who killed Anduin Lothar, the savior of humanity. He is considered a Hero, so much that Thrall wears his armor and carries his hammer - the same Hammer that killed Lothar, or one very similar to it. Thrall calls for peace while wearing the armor and weapon of an Orc who very nearly destroyed Humanity, ostensibly to honor him. In addition, he calls his capital, the symbol of the power and might of the new Horde, Orgrimmar. It's not very hard to see why a human, dwarf, or High Elf might find this symbology a bit insulting, and wonder why the "New" Horde is so eager to honor the Orc who committed some of the worst atrocities of the "Old" Horde. It's even worse for Varian, considering how close he was to Lothar, who was murdered by Orgrim.

Orgrim certainly isn't the only one to be honored like this either. Many of the main generals and architects of the Human, Dwarven, and High Elven genocide are now revered and honored by the Horde, with little to no attempts made to acknowledge their faults and the very real war crimes they committed against the Alliance. Grom Hellscream was one of the first to drink the Demon's blood offered by Gul'dan and commited many atrocities against the Draenei, against humans in the second war, and against Night Elves later.. Kargath Bladefist likewise has had multiple landmarks and fortresses named in his honor, and when he was killed in Outland after revealing himself to be a continued servant of demonic powers, Nazgrel (Another war criminal of the "Old" Horde) spoke of him with respect and honor.

If you are trying to break away from the example of the Old Horde, embracing so much of it seems like a very counter-intuitive way of doing it, and Varian, having at least seen the way Orgrim himself is honored, has a right to at least be made uncomfortable by this.

The state of the Horde and the Alliance

Once upon a time, when the World of Warcraft was all shiny and new, things were simple: the Horde hated the Alliance and they, in turn, despised the Horde. It was a simpler time, but this wasn't just some game mechanic to facilitate PvP and hours of ganking, oh no, it was integral to the lore of Azeroth.

Now, it's also worth remembering that there's no black and white in Azeroth either. The Horde aren't evil for just being the Horde, neither are the Alliance all pure as newly fallen snow. Each faction has done its fair share of pure and evil acts depending on the actions of individual heroes and the motivations of their leaders.

But now we're post patch 3.1, it's time to rexamine the state of relations between the two factions. Times have changed quite drastically since we first entered Azeroth and the addition of The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King have only made things much more complicated. The Wrath Gate cinematic gave us some glimpse of how the two factions are getting on in the continually evolving lore of Azeroth. While the recent trailer for the Secrets of Ulduar offered an even more promising glimpse at the deterioration of that tenuous peace.

For the most part this is mutual, but the real culprit behind everything is King Varian Wynn. Yes, the human king hates the Orcs (and by extension the Horde) and, to be honest, who can blame him? Abducted, bespelled and sold into slavery as part of a grand plot by the dragoness Onyxia he (as the gladiator Lo'Gosh) found himself without his memories in Orgrimmar.

Now returned to his throne room in Stormwind, he is a changed man. Bitter and battleworn, his attitude only gets worse once the Alliance loses its greatest living legend Bolvar Fordragon during the battle of the Wrath Gate.

So last night, I finally got around to completing the Wrath Gate questline and witnessed for myself how much Varian is letting his hatred rule his head. He blames the Horde and Thrall personally for the death of Bolvar despite the fact that it was a renegade faction of the Forsaken under the orders of Grand Apothocary Putress which caused the massacre. For now, at least, he seems so blinded by hate that he is unable or unwilling to make that distinction:

"I've waited a long time for this, Thrall. For every time I was thrown into one of your damned arenas... for every time I killed a green-skinned aberration like you... I could only think of one thing. What our world could be without you and your twisted Horde..."

At the same time, the Horde are not all innocence and light either. Thrall's right-hand orc Garrosh Hellscream is just as bad. While he doesn't so much hate humans, he does lust for power seeing himself as the next Warchief and believes Thrall's weakness is his willingness to entertain humans like Jaina Proudmore (who I'm sure Thrall has a crush on).

So with 3.1, we got our first proper look at how the Alliance and Horde are coping post-Wrath Gate and it's not pretty. Varian seems to be swallowed by grief and fury while Thrall is receptive to Jaina's suggestions simply because she has always been a mediator between the factions.

You'd think such a dangerous situation as the resurgence of the Old God Yogg-Saron might unite these enemies against a common foe. Perhaps in the past this could have been true but now, neither side is willing to be co-operative. The trailer, as well as setting up 3.1, also features a promising sub-plot focusing on how the the two sides are beginning to turn completely against each other. I think it's only a matter of time before Blizzard bring this whole mess to a head and Varian and Garrosh face off.

We've already seen from the trailer that this is part of an on-going storyline, but I suspect it's not just a justification for war. There's a promise of something larger than just one king's grudge and perhaps we will discover an answer in the next patch or expansion.

The OverAchiever: Starting Glory of the Hero

Time for some thrilling heroics. -- Jayne, "The Train Job"

When I look at the Dalaran landing pad, I see fewer red proto-drakes than I should be. This pains me, dear readers. The 5-man heroic achievements are a lot of fun, if admittedly time consuming, and they force you to think on your feet and wring the most out of your character's abilities. Plus - it's a proto-drake. If you didn't get a 10-man or 25-man drake before 3.1 hit, you're out of luck there. Odds are good that you're still waiting for a green one to hatch out of the worthless egg that snake-oil salesman from the Oracles sells you, some jerk is camping the Time-Lost spawn 24/7, and the worst DPS in your Pinnacle PuG was the guy who won the blue drake off of Skadi, right right?

A lot of the WoW population has been at 80 for a while now and has some quality gear under their belts, much of it obtainable without setting foot in a raid. You should be able to pull off all of the 5-man heroic achievements in decent blues with a good group. I highly recommend trying to run with a stable set of players and -- if at all possible -- at least one Shaman. This is more true if your group is still gearing up and needs the damage boost provided by Bloodlust/Heroism.

I thought initially about organizing these from the easiest to the hardest, but I think it's ultimately less confusing to list them dungeon by dungeon. We'll address each dungeon alphabetically, so let's get started with Ahn'kahet:

As a quick note, these guides are being written from the perspective of a player who is usually playing a Druid tank (and occasionally healer). I'll try to point out if I know of alternate strategies for different groups or tanks, but I certainly don't know them all. If there's a strategy you've successfully managed that I don't mention here, please drop a note in the comments.

AHN'KAHET: THE OLD KINGDOM

This is one of the harder heroics overall, but the achievements here range from very easy to fairly difficult. As such, it's a good heroic to use as a diagnostic tool; the individual achievements here will allow you to figure out if you've got the tank quality, healing throughput, and DPS firepower to get through the meta-achievement. If you can manage all of the achievements here, you should be able to manage everything else.

A Bloodlust will help a lot on the final boss and, depending on your group composition, may also help on the first.

Respect Your Elders

As you're probably aware by now, the Ahn'kahar Guardians which spawn periodically during this encounter render the boss and his titchy little adds immune to all damage. Ordinarily you handle this by killing the Guardian (they have about 35K health) and then going back to DPSing the boss and AoEing the adds, but here you're going to have to come up with a way of keeping the Guardians occupied elsewhere. The immunity effect is canceled once you get them out of range, which I believe is roughly 40-50 yards. You know the somewhat elongated room in which you'll find Nadox? Its length is a rough guide to the distance you need to maintain between Nadox and the Guardians in order to keep the latter from granting the former total immunity.

You'll need:

Tank
Off-tank (DPS DK, Warrior, or Paladin is fine)
Healer
Off-healer if needed (hybrid DPS is fine)
DPS

If your tank is very well-geared, you can usually pull this off without an offhealer. I've also had a group successfully use DPS Shamans as Guardian tanks here, but any sufficiently hardy class that can heal itself could probably manage it. Most strategies suggest having your off-tank pick up Nadox and your real tank pick up the Guardians because Nadox's melee is very weak but damage from the Guardians really starts adding up.

Now, I used to do this all in Nadox's room, but commenters in the Wowhead thread on this achievement noted a much better way to do it that I'll be using in the future. As you clear to the boss, take the path to your left, and clear all of the trash you find in the hallway immediately preceding Nadox's room. Have your off-tank aggro him, pull him out of the room down the stairs to the left, and tank him at the farthest end of the hallway you just cleared (if this doesn't make any sense, the commenter Caylie on the Wowhead thread provides pictures). Your DPS and healer stay here as well and just nuke down the boss. If you're situated correctly, Nadox will never go immune.

Your real tank will sit at the stairs and wait for Guardians to hatch. Because they'll make a beeline for your healer, they'll head down the stairs toward Nadox and you can pick them up very easily and keep them tanked here. You may need an off-healer to toss you a few heals because you will be well out of range of the real healer. However, if you're sitting on some decent gear, blowing a few cooldowns and a health pot is usually sufficient if your DPS is competent and Nadox dies quickly.

The Party's Over

Fairly simple. The most obvious way to do this is just to have someone drop group and leave the instance, but apparently you can also have someone drop group, wait for the rest of the group to start DPSing the boss, and then participate as you normally would. The person who drops group doesn't get the achievement but can still help on the kill. Weird.

Volunteer Work

If your tank and healer are well-geared, this isn't tough. Jedoga's damage will increase substantially when her "sacrifice" isn't nuked down, but it's really nothing that a few cooldowns -- or, failing that, a lot of healing -- can't handle. If your tank is still having difficulty living through this, try to have an off-healer in the group who can help out a bit. If that still doesn't work, you can attempt to rotate taunts on Jedoga across her platform -- but with diminishing returns on taunts in 3.1, I think it's safe to say that you should treat this as a tank/healer gear check more than anything else.

Volazj's Quick Demise

This achievement is significantly easier with a Protection Warrior tank, as they can Spell Reflect Volazj's Mind Flay and cause a ton of damage to him, but it's still doable with any class of tank provided they don't threat-cap their DPS.

This achievement becomes fairly straightforward once you realize that the real boss isn't Volazj but rather your Insanity adds. Volazj himself will actually die quickly to competent DPS; it's the adds for whom you need to be blowing cooldowns and potion timers. With a Bloodlust/Heroism and good DPS, you will probably find yourself triggering both Insanities at the same time. If your group has the capacity to deal with these adds within 30-40 seconds, congratulations -- you can do this achievement with time to spare. If you can't, time to start tinkering with group composition or some of the more punk ways of managing this achievement. The good news is that there are a lot of ways to manage this (the Wowhead comment thread lists most of them), from Warlock summons to Army of the Dead to Divine Intervention to having your healer suicide straight off the pull or just come as DPS. The bad news is that none of these will compensate if you just can't pump out the damage you need.

My groups tend to go for the straight burn method, using Bloodlust at the start of the fight and triggering both Insanities at the same time. Using Army of the Dead going into the Insanity phase is extremely helpful if you have a Death Knight, as is stacking your group on top of each other to minimize time spent getting to ranged adds for your melee DPS/tank. Blow all of your serious survival and DPS cooldowns on the adds and get back to killing Volazj posthaste. If you manage this, you should have plenty of time to kill Volazj before the 2-minute mark. The fastest I've managed it is 52 seconds; the slowest has been 1 minute and 27 seconds, so I tend to favor this over more gimmicky techniques because there is room for error or slower/less bursty DPS.

Wotlk News: Patch 3.1 lesser-known changes

Sure, you know about dual spec, the Argent Tournament, and Ulduar. But patch 3.1 was a patch of many changes, and some of them seem to have flown under most people's radar. Here are a few changes that have been surprising some people recently, judging by the tips we've been getting.

• Siphon Life is no longer a separate spell. The talent now adds a self-healing effect to your Corruption, as well as boosting the damage on Corruption, Seed of Corruption, and Unstable Affliction.


• Emblems are now automatically distributed to everyone upon the first person looting them, similar to gold. This means no more forgotten emblems, and no more rush to the corpse as everyone goes to get theirs. It will also make loot chests much less unpleasant.


• Many spells with ground effects, such as Rain of Fire, Blizzard, and Death and Decay, are not showing the same as they used to. This is because there is a new video effects option, "Show Projected Textures," which controls whether things like the rune circles from RoF/Blizz/DnD are rendered on your client. It also appears to control my framerate in 25-man raids.


• The 10% experience bonus from heirloom shoulders now applies to quest experience as well as experience gained from killing mobs.

Is there anything else that took you by surprise in patch 3.1?

Wotlk Article: Emalon the Storm Watcher

So ends the age of the weekly loot piñata. The Wintergrasp raid instance, somewhat inappropriately called the Vault of Archavon, has a new tenant who isn't quite the pushover Archavon the Stone Watcher has been since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King. The Vault of Archavon was essentially every Level 80 player's weekly lottery and near guaranteed shot at Emblems. It was the most compelling reason to capture Wintergrasp as the raid was only available to the faction in control of the zone. Enter Emalon the Storm Watcher, a new raid boss with Patch 3.1 who drops Ulduar and Season 6 loot. Emalon's difficulty is ramped up considerably from Archavon and -- if initial forays are any indication -- hard enough to give seasoned raiders like our own Matt Low an aneurysm.

Unlike his meek neighbor Archavon, Emalon actually requires a bit of strategy and situational awareness. He also comes with four bodyguards, the Tempest Minions, who are integral to the fight. As can probably be inferred from his name and his crew, Emalon the Storm Watcher's primary source of damage is lightning, or Nature damage. It won't be necessary to stack resistance, just an understanding of the fight, his abilities, and knowing what to do and avoid. You can visit Emalon by turning into a corridor on the right just before heading into Archavon.

Emalon abilities
Chain Lightning - Sort of like a Bizarro version of the Shaman spell of the same name, the first target will take no damage while targets after the third jump can be one-shot. Think of a boss version of the Lightning Constructs in the Halls of Stone.
Lightning Nova - Emalon borrows another ability, this time from Loken in the Halls of Lightning. Emalon's version has a five-second cast time, which should be enough time for melee to run the hell away. It has a 20 yard range and should be relatively easy to evade.

Tempest Minion abilities
Overcharged - Emalon chooses one Tempest Minion to Overcharge, which heals that minion to full health. It's a buff that increases its damage dealt by 20% as well as enlarging it. This buff will stack periodically at about 2 second intervals and once it reaches 10 stacks, the Tempest Minion will overload and explode, dealing ridiculous damage in an extremely wide radius that will wipe the raid.
Lightning Nova - In Heroic version, Tempest Minions will also cast a version of Lightning Nova that's weaker than Emalon's but stronger than Loken's. They cast this every 20 seconds.

What to do
The general idea is to get some generous spacing amongst the raid to minimize Chain Lightning damage. Ranged DPS work really well for this fight because they can generally avoid Lightning Novas and switch to an Overcharged Tempest Minion without having to reposition themselves. Melee DPS will have to work a little harder as they keep DPSing Emalon, avoiding the novas, and moving to an Overcharged minion throughout the fight.

There are only two phases to this fight and there is no enrage timer. One tank is required for Emalon and another for the adds, of which there will constantly be four. Whenever a Tempest Minion is killed, Emalon will spawn another one at his location, which means the off-tank should be ready to taunt it to prevent it going after other raid members. Because the off-tank is constantly on the adds, she is generally the one able to spot the Overcharged Tempest Minion the earliest and should be the one to mark it. All DPS should switch (use an /assist macro if you need to) to the minion and kill it before it wipes the raid, which puts low-DPS raids at an extreme disadvantage.

It's essentially shuttling between these two phases and getting into the rhythm of things. If all players -- particularly melee DPS -- manage to stay alive every Lightning Nova cast, and the raid downs Tempest Minions in a timely fashion, Emalon should be a manageable fight.

The loot
Normal mode Emalon drops two pieces of loot and Emblems of Valor. He can drop the hands, legs, or chest pieces of Tier 8 (which drop in 10-man Ulduar) and Deadly Gladiator non-set pieces such as the cloak, boots, bracers, rings, and amulets. This gives Emalon a considerably more complex loot table than Archavon. In Heroic mode, he drops four items which can be the hands, legs, or chest pieces of Tier 8.5 (from 25-man Ulduar) or an assortment of Furious Gladiator items, and a pair of Emblems of Conquest. Emalon can drop legs and gloves from the Arena Season 6 sets, as well as any of the non-set pieces making the 25-man loot table even more expansive than the Normal mode. Fortunately, PvP non-set items are not class-specific, which should give players a better chance at winning something. Good luck and have fun storming the castle vault!

Observations from running a Naxx-25 PuG

I'm very "up" on PuGs. I started my career as a PuG tank and met a lot of great players that way, many of whom I still raid with today. I've always been a stout supporter of throwing caution to the wind and joining LFG for an afternoon to see where it'll take you; it's been my experience that random players on your realm can and often will surprise you.

Once you master the art of the 5-person PuG, the ultimate risk is a raid PuG. One-shot the instance, or spend the night wiping? You won't know until you try.

I used to run Hyjal PuG's in late Burning Crusade and got to be the person in charge of arranging healers on Anetheron, explaining where to die on Azgalor, and uttering a hollow laugh at suggestions on whether or not Archimonde was in the cards (answer: hell no). I wasn't around for my guild's Naxx run one of these past weeks, and a few guildies were interested in gearing up their alts, so we thought -- PuG a 25-man Naxx? Why not?

1. Sending an open invite for tanks, healers, and DPS into the trade channel provides a pretty instructive look at what people are most interested in playing and gearing right now.

My totally unscientific take on things; it's a lot easier to PuG a tank now than it was in BC, healers are still scarcer than hens' teeth (but this will get easier if they know your run has a good track record), and -- as predicted -- everyone and his brother has a Death Knight. I could easily have filled every non-healer slot with a Death Knight, and wound up running 3 Death Knight tanks and 3 Death Knight DPS. For the forseeable future, I think you can realistically expect the Vanquisher token to be a complete nightmare.

2. Trying to explain Heigan to new raiders apparently sounds like you're reciting The Decameron as translated from Esperanto into Farsi and back again.

I think a 20 minute, 27 second kill says it all, although I await the legion of commenters certain to pop up and say, "You think that's bad?"

Tip: send people here, don't pull until everyone's seen it, assign an experienced "dancer" a raid icon, and tell people to stick to this person like glue on phase 2. I made the mistake of assigning this icon to one of our DK off-tanks, who assured me he knew the fight. It turns out he really didn't, and I spent each phase 1 bawling, "Move now! OK forward! More! More! Stop right there! Great! OK, forward! Back a little bit! Stop right there!" until I went hoarse.

3. On that note, who's tanking for you still matters a lot.

Tanks invariably set the pace of the run, and if they've never seen a fight before, you'll wind up having to spend a lot more time before each boss pull explaining what they have to do. Try to run with at least one tank who's familiar with the fights, even if they're not the best-geared. They are still likely to outperform a better-geared tank who stares blankly when you ask them in which direction they'll be kiting Grobbulus, and if you're really lucky, they'll coach the other tanks on what to do while you're handling other problems.

4. Take the number of healers you'd need for a basic, competent raid. All set? Now add another one.

Good healing -- or, in its absence, a lot of healing -- can hide some of your raid's inexperience with the encounters, and if you're pugging a 25-man run, it'll also help tremendously once you hit fights like Heigan, Grobbulus, Gothik, and Sapphiron. There comes a point at which you start to hit diminishing returns on this -- i.e. there's no point overloading your raid with healers if you won't survive Patchwerk and Thaddius -- but a full complement of 7 healers would have been a godsend at times.

5. Get Failbot and configure it to send information to you or the raid leadership.

Failbot is a tiny mod that will let you know instantly if someone's crossed charges on Thaddius, has two left feet on Heigan, or has an uncanny attraction to void zones on Kel'Thuzad (among other things). No matter how good you are as a raid leader, you still have to do your job in raids on top of trying to watch how things are going elsewhere. If you're not using Failbot, try to use and/or configure other mods to give you fast, simple information on how players and the raid are doing overall. If someone is clearly having problems on a particular fight and you know they're new to raiding, you won't lose anything by messaging them privately and asking them if they have any questions before you reach the next boss.

6. There's no perfect loot system for a PuG raid, but consistency is important.

/Roll subjects you to the tyranny of RNG and how lucky -- or not -- players are on a given night. Loot council is stupid when, by pugging, you've tacitly admitted you can't rustle up enough of your own players. Telling players to talk amongst themselves to figure who needs an upgrade most is just asking for trouble, and I'm equally uncomfortable with a third party trying to make that call. While the stars might align on any given night and one of these systems might result in a perfect set of drops going to the most deserving and grateful players -- don't count on it.

We wound up using Master Looter and a version of /roll that gave greater priority to main spec, main-toon players over alts and off-specs, and greater priority to players who hadn't previously won anything during the run. 22 out of 25 players ultimately left with upgrades, and in a lot of cases, multiple upgrades and even some offspec gear. I didn't get any serious complaints and people seemed happy with the arrangement, but it was occasionally very hard master-looting a piece to someone who I felt wasn't as deserving as a more hard-working player.

Whatever loot system you're using, announce it before the run begins, and stick with it. You may not like the individual outcome all the time, but one of the most frequent complaints we get on the site is that a PuG group or raid decided to change the loot rules on the fly. If your pugged raiders didn't like the loot rules, they didn't have to come, and there's nothing that says you have to like the individual outcome of each decision as long as you're consistently enforcing the process by which they're made. Having to master-loot a tier piece to a 700 DPS player over his healer comrade just because they have equal priority and the former won the roll will make you want to pull your hair out, but that was the system you all agreed on before you started, and as any lawyer could tell you, hard cases make bad law.

Master-looting a piece to a more "deserving" player is a great way to get the entire raid to think you're a dishonest prick (and they'd be right). Incidentally, it's also a fantastic way to end up on Guildwatch.

Guessing on the patch 3.1 release

bridges_squares wants to know, and we're getting really, really close, so let's finally go out on that limb, shaky as it may be: when's the patch coming out? Turpster predicted it would be this past Tuesday on the WoW Insider Show last week (since Noblegarden and the equipment manager got delayed, he figured they wanted to hurry for a release), but obviously no dice on that one. And on the other end of things, April 26th is the date we're told Noblegarden will start, so it's a pretty good guess we'll see the patch by then.

If you follow that line of reasoning, that just leaves the next two Tuesdays, April 14th and 21st. And since we had rolling restarts last week, it seems like maintenance this week will bring us the patch on Tuesday, the 14th. But of course there are other factors in here: the PTR should go down before the patch comes up, and since the PTR it still up, we be waiting until the 21st. Also, just because Blizzard said Noblegarden on the 26th doesn't mean they won't delay it again, so we may still see the patch on the 28th or after that. And Tuesdays are usually when the live realms get patched (Fridays are usually when the patch the PTR, in my experience), but technically they could do it anytime, right?

So let's do a poll. I'm going to go with Tuesday the 21st (since there's no sign of the PTR going down yet), but when do you think patch 3.1 will drop? And no, "when it's ready" is not an option -- we'll just assume (hopefully correctly) Blizzard will make sure of that anyway.

Tom Chilton on what's coming in patch 3.1

Our old friend Jessica Citizen has an interview up with Blizzard's Lead Game Designer on World of Warcraft, Mr. Tom Chilton. When Jeff Kaplan shipped off to other pastures in Blizzard to work on the new MMO, Chilton says he took over Kaplan's meetings, so right now, he is the flag leading the big ship of WoW. In the interview, he talks a bit about dual specs -- the system was originally planned to go in with the Lich King expansion, but it had to be pushed back to 3.1. And Chilton says he's already expecting to answer questions about triple specs at this year's BlizzCon, but of course, there's a balance there, as there has to be some choice on the part of the player as to what they decide to specialize in.

He also talks about the Argent Tournament and Ulduar -- the Tournament, he says, will be a boon to solo players and players who enjoy daily questing, with the jousting minigame mixing things up a bit. And Ulduar's hard modes, as we've heard before, will bring raiding back to the difficulty that players expect. Chilton fesses up to an error that GC hinted at yesterday -- Blizzard nerfed PvP items at the same time that they made raiding more accessible, and the result is that people flocked to PvE while ignoring most of the PvP options. "We kind of over-solved the problem," he says.

In the end, he calls 3.1 "the most ambitious content patch we've ever done for World of Warcraft." We'll have to see -- given that Noblegarden should show up with the new patch, it ought to be implemented by at least April 26th.

Wotlk Article: Quantifying Wrath's success

The Egotistical Priest has a good series of posts up attempting to somehow quantify whether Wrath has been an overall success or not. Of course, it's definitely a financial success, but has the game's second expansion delivered what both players and Blizzard expected it to? Vonya sets out to find out in what has turned into a three part post: you can find parts one and two on the site now, and part three is set to come out tomorrow.

So far, the answer is yes: while the area of Tradeskills is noted as less than a success (it seems to me, too, that tradeskills had more variety and options in Burning Crusade than their current state in Wrath, though that might be because we're only partway through the expansion cycle), everything else is noted as a win for Blizzard: they've really beefed up questing, balance has been intriguing since Wrath (and even if one class has rubbed you wrong, consider how many players came running back with the expansion patch to re-try their class), and of course, Achievements have (predictably) brought the game to new levels of addiction and given players of all kinds new things to do.

Vonya still plans to tackle instancing and raiding as the other two criteria for Wrath's success (and there are probably a few other ways you could test it -- lore? setting?), but by the reasoning so far, Wrath is a win no matter how you slice it. Blizzard has outdone themselves with the second expansion -- the only question is where they'll go from here.

Lichborne: The Rise of Blood in 3.1

The Blood tree often gets a bad rap among those not in the know. It's a decent leveling tree, but it's generally considered not to have the tanking power or AoE DPS Potential of Unholy or Frost. By all indications, that has changed in 3.1, especially in the latest patch. Not only have many key Blood talents and skills received key buffs or changes, but the very nature of Armor Penetration has changed, with the 25% benefit buff making Blood's mostly physical damage dealing style well suited to take advantage of the change. This is quite a shift from just before 3.1, when many were afraid disease-less Blood would be wiped out and leave the tree with no viable hassle-free DPS specs.


Blood DPS

Blood DPS can now safely use Death Strike as their standard Frost/Unholy Rune dump thanks to the buff baseline buffs and the new Improved Death Strike talent, which in alone solves a lot of Blood DPS problems, since you're no longer locked into 13 points of Frost for Annihilation. This allows heading into the Unholy Tree, where one can pick up major useful talents such as Morbidity, Epidemic, and Master of Ghouls, resulting a build that might look a little like this. This build benefits from grabbing extra strength, Death Coil damage, disease duration, and spell hit in Unholy, which would be near impossible if Blood still had to grab Annihilation. Since Death Coil will be your main RP dump and you'll be shooting off free Death Coils due to sudden doom, you'll want the damage and the extra chance for them to hit.

Some people have been a bit concerned that the Tier 8 4-piece bonus doesn't cover Death Strike, but don't expect Blood to fall behind too much because of that, because it does apply to Heart Strikes. That's really the secret of the build. Death Strikes are just there to generate Death Runes for Heart Strikes -- or, if you're AEing large groups, Blood Boil.

The two major disadvantages kept by Blood DPS are needing to babysit the Ghoul (since you won't be able to afford Night of the Dead) and the tightness of their rotation, needing to spend as many runes as possible on Heart Strike before Frost Fever and Blood Plague fall off. The former problem - is the perma-ghoul worth it for Blood DPS when it will die so easily - is probably one that will need some further exploration, and the latter shouldn't be as much of a problem thanks to a few points spent in Epidemic and Death Strike not removing diseases like Obliterate did without Annihilation. Overall, if Blood goes live looking close to how it does now, it should be a very tempting tree for DPS.

Blood Tanking

One of Blood Tanking's major weaknesses has always been that it's the weakest AE tree. That is pretty much gone as a problem is 3.1. The new disease-less Blood Boil is actually working remarkably well as a snap AE aggro tool, enough so that you shouldn't really need to worry about heading 21 points into Unholy to grab Unholy Blight. A Tank build like this should work pretty well both for survivability and threat. If you have a Frost DPSer in your raid who can cast Improved Icy Touch, all the better, you just freed up 3 points.

Also nice for Blood Tanks is the new buff to Scent of Blood. The latest iteration gives 10 runic power per a charge and can be activated by dodging, parrying, or simply by taking damage. Preliminary tests on the PTR are placing it at almost always up in multi-mob situations, and up enough to provide 2-3 runic power per second on average on single target fights.

This should make it a lot easier for Blood Death Knights to keep chaining Rune Strike and cement their place as solid single-target aggro holders. Of course, Scent of Blood is also conveniently low enough in the tree that Frost and Unholy tanks can take it, but Blood will probably still find it the easiest to take, as they'll probably have 3 spare points on the way to getting Will of the Necropolis and Heart Strike easily.

Speaking of Heart Strike...

There are some Death Knights who are asking for a new secondary effective to Heart Strike now that Blood Boil is an effective AE damage and threat tool. There's certainly a good argument for the cleave being less useful than it once was, but it's also useful to keep in mind that it wouldn't be the first time Blizzard has left a strike without a useful secondary ability, such as when they removed the HoT removal from Plague Strike.

Overall, even with that less useful secondary mechanic, Heart Strike is still a very fine damage dealer. Blood is a tree that's currently headed into 3.1 stronger than ever, and if you haven't taken a look at it lately, you might want to strongly consider a second one now. I'm probably going to keep on with Unholy, but at the same time, all that health recovery and a Dancing Rune Weapon churning out Blood Boils is just looking way too juicy for words..

More new Jewelcrafting recipes found on the 3.1 PTR

Here's another nice set of tradeskill updates to show up on the 3.1 PTR recently, as Kaliope points out: New Jewelcrafting recipes.

First up, Shifting Twilight Opal will now finally exist in game. This purple gem should be a great possible choice for tanks looking to fill out a metagem or slot bonus requirement, especially. It's available from Tiffany Cartier in Dalaran.

The other new recipes are actually nice and conveniently straight from the trainer. There's 2 blue rings and 2 blue amulets, one each of caster and melee stats, with plenty of stamina and resilience:

• Emerald Choker


• Sky Sapphire Amulet
  


• Runed Mana Band


• Scarlet Signet

They do require large amounts of blue gems to craft, but Kaliope notes that some of those gems, specifically Forest Emeralds and Sky Sapphires, are rather low profit anyway, and that this jewelry is likely to be in demand among players looking to break into the Arena at the start of the new season that's coming with 3.1. The new recipes are also all in prime position to be valid skillup paths, with the Shifting Twilight Opal learnable at 390 skill and the new PvP jewelry learnable at 420 skill. got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.

Chinese WoW provider The9 faces bankruptcy in wake of Wrath woes

We told you a few days back that Wrath of the Lich King has had a tough time getting approved in China due to the government's strict censorship laws, but now there's even more bad news for Chinese WoW players. As Sister site Massively reports, The9 has told JLM Pacific Epoch that they will face bankruptcy if the expansion is not green-lighted soon. The Government agency responsible for the decision says that they must balance the needs of the9 with the need to root out "unhealthy" content from the game.

The9 has actually already paid for the game itself, having secured the Chinese licensing rights for a hefty fee back in April 2008. Add to that the upkeep cost of many of the most powerful supercomputers in China, and rumors that many Chinese WoW players have either quit or moved on to Taiwanese accounts for their Wrath fix, and it's easy to see why they're is getting a bit cash starved. If the9 goes under, it's difficult to say whether Wrath can be salvaged in China, but we'll keep you posted whatever happens.

Fishers in 3.1,New mounts for Horde

One of the complaints heard from the Horde is that they have fewer buyable mounts than the Alliance side, making it intrinsically harder for them to gain the 100 mount achievement. 3.1 will see some steps taken to amend that gap, as the Horde will now be able to purchase a Black Wolf, a White Kodo, and a Black Skeletal Horse.

Some 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.

If nothing else, between this and the tournament, it looks like we'll be seeing a few more Dragonhawks flying around. Good luck, mount collectors!

Cooking and clams get more convenient changes in patch 3.1

The patch notes for the 3.1 PTR have recently been updated, and they have quite a few nice updates and a few things that should make things more convenient for cooks everywhere. We were promised cooking would be easier in 3.1, and these patch notes definitely deliver on that promise. Let's check out the changes (compiled courtesy of MMO-Champion), which include even easier campfires and those 2 promised recipes:
* A new recipe has been added to cooking trainers for making Black Jelly, using several Borean Man 'O War as ingredients. While it looks disgusting, it restores more health and mana than the highest level food.
* Flint and Tinder is no longer necessary for creating a campfire. You're just that resourceful!
* Ingredients such as Spices, Apples, and the like have been removed from most cooking recipes.
* Players no longer need to complete the Clamlette Surprise quest to gain Artisan cooking. The quest now offers the unique recipe, Clamlette Magnifique. If you already completed the quest, you can visit Dirge Quickcleave in Gadgetzan to learn this recipe (for free).
* Several Northrend recipes were given greater skill up ranges to make it easier to reach 450 cooking skill.
* You no longer need to learn cooking from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

Streamlining the way we learn the cooking skill seems to be one of the themes of these changes. Not only do we no longer have to do the quest for Clamette Surprise to learn Artisan cooking, but even the cookbooks are a thing of the past. It's at least one or two less hoops to jump for, and very nice for newbies and alts, letting them focus on leveling and questing instead of running halfway around the world for a basic skill.

Of course, most dedicated cooks are still going to want to do the Clamette Surprise quest, since it gives a new cooking recipe, Clamlette Magnifique. One more option to level cooking is always good, plus it means less trouble for chefs in trying to smuggle recipes between factions to get Chef de Cuisine. And hey, that's not the only decent Clam related news in this patch. They've finally managed to fix that silly clam stacking bug. Loot recovered from a clam, whether you were mounted or not, will automatically stack coming out of the shell. That was definitely an annoying bug, and this fix will a godsend for my Murloc slaughtering sprees.

In more straight up convenient changes, Northrend cooks will find it easier to skill up. Not only will we be getting a new recipe for the Borean Man O War (Mmmm, delicious, delicious Black Jelly), but we'll be seeing existing Northrend recipes gaining greater skillup ranges. Hopefully this no more grinding of annoying feasts. Not that I won't still grind em. Small Feasts are hilarious.

Finally, Flint and Tinder is no longer needed for campfires at all. I suppose if we're resourceful enough to find wood for a campfire anywhere, we should be able to find two sticks or rocks to bang together for a spark, right? Of course, I didn't have a problem with needing it anyway. I always kept my pocket knife around.

Extra non-meat or fish ingredients for food is also apparently going away for many recipes. Of course, this is a trend that's been around for a while, as many Outland and Northrend needed no spices either. Of course, it's likely Northern Spices are sticking around. What else are we going to use all these Dalaran Cooking Rewards for?

Is Wrath too easy, or are we just better?

In the eternal question of whether Wrath of the Lich King is too easy, Our Girl Friday posits an answer that I've often wondered about myself. Is it really that WotLK is so gosh-darned easy, or could the issue actually be that maybe, just maybe, the players have gotten better?

The wealth of knowledge about the nuts-and-bolts of theorycraft has never been more available. New players and old veterans alike have resources like WoW Insider, Wowhead, WoWwiki, or that juggernaut of theorycraft, Elitist Jerks. There are strategy videos, stategy manuals, and even a few strategy comics. The forums themselves have never been more informative, especially when you consider Ghostcrawler laying down wisdom all over the place. The information about how to play is out there for the taking.

And, c'mon. It's been about half a decade and near 12 million subscribers. Once you've done Nethekurse or Zereketh, you should know that you're not supposed to stand in pink, black, or red circles. Really, just don't stand in stuff. Is that really such a deep and meaningful skill that you have to relearn "Don't stand in stuff!" for Kel'Thuzad? So, if the Wrath raids aren't demanding a gear-based progression (meaning, it's all a gear check), then we should entertain the idea that we've gotten pretty good at not standing in stuff. That's certainly not the only raiding skill, but I'm using it as an indication that we're meeting the basic "skill" requirements.

Of course, even Ghostcrawler has acknowledged that Naxxramas is somewhat the new welfare epics. We know that Ulduar's going to be noticeably more "difficult." But until then, we could probably accept that the current accessibility of content owes some part to us getting better as players.

Human Females trade faces on the PTR

One of the more mysterious bugs currently on the PTR is the fact that Human Females (maybe others, but none I've noticed) transferred over to the PTR are having their faces swapped around. In the picture above, you can see that my Paladin has two different faces. The one on the left is from Live servers, the one on the Right is from the patch 3.1 test realm. It isn't happening to all characters, oddly. Just some of them. My Priest, who is also a Human Female, transferred just fine and has the same face she always does. Which happens to be the face my Paladin has on the PTR now. Funky.

It's a known issue, and I'm sure it'll go away long before this patch ever hits live realms, but it's a very curious bug. It was likely caused by something quite mundane, but it makes me wonder if they were working on something that caused faces to shift out of the numerical order they had before. Adding new skins, perhaps? Updating old ones? Maybe, maybe not.

Oh me, oh my. Blizzard sure gets up to some weird stuff. Right now they are holding a theme park contest. Illustrate your own original Blizzard Entert

When the first set of 3.1 patch notes popped up, many Death Knights were surprised to see that their auras were being reworked into something that, well, just isn't an aura at all.

Instead, the effects are being rolled into talents so that, if talented, the Death Knight herself still gains the benefit, but does not extend it to party or raid members.

Although they will now be called, for example, Improved Blood Presence, the benefits will be applied regardless of the presence assumed by the character.

I have to admit that my first reaction to the change was a negative one. It feels weird to me switching from a Holy Paladin to a character that simply does not have a comparable range of buffs and auras to offer.

That's when my roomie and addict of WoW forums and websites, piped in with the why. Today, Ghostcrawler gives an official explanation.

Unholy Aura, which grants a 15% movement speed increase, was slowly "becoming mandatory as a raid buff." The ability is not only handy for long corpse runs, as well as fights where movement speed and reaction time are critical, but it seriously impacts the overall damage done by the meleeing crowd.

Melee characters spend an annoying amount of time backing out of range because of AoE or ground effects, running around the mobs to always stay behind them, following after a mobile tank, and the like. This disrupts their damage, and because this has always been the case, classes and encounters are balanced assuming that this is still going on.

Ghostcrawler also mentions that Blizzard "considered giving it to other classes" but, as you can imagine, that "would just be accepting all players moving faster all the time." If that were the case, many boot enchants would have to be reworked, and in fact, it would likely just be easier to increase everyone's base speed and call it a day.

So why not simply change Unholy Aura? Frost Aura was, to quote GC, "kind of lame", and I'd have to agree. Overall, "the [dk aura] mechanic was just a little awkward and hard to explain."

After all, it is a unique aura system. Paladins can toss up any aura, regardless of spec, while a raid would have to insist on an Unholy Death Knight for the speed boost benefit. Allowing this to continue would be contrary to the direction that Blizz has been taking raiding. They don't want any class and spec combo to get an automatic, necessitated, raid invitation.

Considering that Blizzard is also working to make Blood and Frost specs more appealing to entice more of the Death Knight population to let go of their Unholy ways, this change will not only be fairer to every class that wants a shot at a raid spot, it will also allow Death Knights to be accepted regardless of spec.

WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Druid changes

All right, Druids. I've been rolled out of bed to come look at the new PTR test notes, because apparently this is a big deal or something. As far as I'm concerned, all important business can wait until a reasonable hour in the morning, like 3 PM, but because this site is run by crazy people here I am.

So let's go skim the patch notes quickly -- /flick flick flick -- and try to answer the most important question first:

Is Tauren cat form still in the game?

/flick flick

Yes.

Man, %*#$ this patch.

Leaving aside this EGREGIOUS OMISSION, we're going to take a look at the preliminary Druid changes in patch 3.1 past the cut here, and courtesy of Michael Sacco and some data-mining gnomes, we also have the Druid Tier 8 shoulder graphic, which is pretty cool and reminds me a lot of Tier 5. I'm also seeing some undocumented changes in the game files off MMO Champion, but I'll have to examine those later today. I haven't been able to get on the PTR yet, so I can't confirm whether these changes have actually gone live on the test realm.

NOT ACTUALLY A DRUID CHANGE BUT IT AFFECTS DRUIDS MORE THAN ANY OTHER CLASS

Death Knights: Plague Strike and Blood Plague no longer remove HoT's. Plague Strike's damage increased quite a bit to compensate.

Bwa ha ha! Eat it, you miserable, overpopulated, overpowered walking corpses!

Oh God, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I need to stop setting off interclass warfare like that. Someone might get hurt.

Anyway. What else is here...

ABOLISH POISON: Now ticks every 3 seconds, up from every 2. Now lasts 12 seconds, up from 8.

Eh. My first thought when reading this was that this isn't going to make combat versus Rogues or Hunters more pleasant, but not having to reapply this as frequently is a pretty big plus. Rogues aren't doing so hot in arena right now. In a move that has shocked the world, Hunters are, for some unaccountable reason. Not that you'd catch me dead in arena nowadays. Or alive either.

Proceeding to the Balance tree --

OWLKIN FRENZY: Owlkin Frenzy is now properly considered an Enrage effect. Now also does not trigger from spell hits, only physical ranged and melee attacks.

With respect to PvE, Owlkin Frenzy was always an iffy talent at best, but one in which 1 or 2 points might be worth your time if you didn't need to pick up raid utility talents. There's sufficient raid damage in important Wrath encounters (e.g. Malygos, Kel'Thuzad, Sapphiron, Grobbulus) that the occasional proc would ultimately provide a damage boost, though not a large one. Because nearly all raid damage is magic-based, the 3.1 change basically shuts OF down for good as a PvE talent.

With that said, it always found its best use in PvP anyhow, and in that respect it's definitely a nerf to Moonkin viability versus casters. However, procs off physical damage have been preserved, and at the moment that's where most of the damage is coming from in arena. I confess, though -- I've never PvP'd as a Moonkin. Thoughts?

That's the only confirmed talent change for Balance so far, so let's head to Feral --

NEW TALENT -- PRIMAL GORE: Grants the periodic damage from your Rake, Lacerate and Rip abilities the ability to critically hit.

Blizzard's been asked about allowing DoT's and HoT's to crit previously. If I'm recalling correctly, they've said that when classic WoW went live, they didn't have the ability to program it, but since then it's an idea they've bounced back and forth a lot, athough it's not necessarily simple to implement from either an itemization or class design perspective.

This looks pretty amazing on the outside (and depending on the proc rate, might very well be), but fair warning: don't be surprised if the damage modifier on Ferocious Bite gets nerfed in order to compensate. Ghostcrawler's mentioned recently that they're concerned about Cat burst in PvP (which is a very valid concern between Rend and Tear -- to which Primal Gore is currently linked -- and Feral Aggression) and were looking for ways to increase Cat sustained damage while reducing burst. Granting Rip and Rake the ability to crit is kind of an elegant solution to this problem, as both are necessary bleeds in the Cat high-DPS rotation.

Oh, and before I forget, this also affects Lacerate, which should be a very welcome damage/threat buff for bears. A 5-stack of Lacerate right now should be ticking for somewhere in the region of 700-1K depending on your gear, gems, and enchants, and a crit on this would be lovely.

SAVAGE ROAR: Now considered an Enrage effect.

Hrm. Enrage effects can be dispelled by Hunters' Tranquilizing Shot. Food for thought.

Restoration is getting a few more confirmed changes so I split the post into two parts. Also, Druid Tier 8 shoulders on the next page!

WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Warlock changes

Blizzard said that they'd be introducing a lot of changes for the Warlock class in Patch 3.1, and if the incomplete patch notes are any indication, it looks like they're following through on that promise. You can read through the patch notes, but the Warlock changes are incredibly interesting. There are a lot of them, so let's go through them one by one and I'll weigh in with my thoughts on whether the changes are good, bad, or badass. Let's start with the baseline changes.

Curse of the Elements (Rank 5) - Increased to 13% spell damage, up from 10%.
It appears that the effects of Malediction has been rolled into the highest rank of this spell -- which means raiding Warlocks regardless of spec no longer have an excuse not to throw it up during a boss fight. Of course, this also means the Warlocks in the raid will have to talk amongst themselves as to who gets that assignment. It's like the Scorpid Sting of Hunters. It's a fantastic debuff, but it doesn't show up on the damage meters.

Curse of Recklessness - Removed
One of the least utilized curses, if only because there are better armor reduction effects which don't actually help your enemies. The good news is that the armor reduction has been rolled into the next spell...

Curse of Weakness - Now also reduces the armor of the target by 5%.
Warlock curses aside from Curse of Agony are generally utility spells, and this one has just been improved. I'm still wondering where the flee prevention fits in now that Curse of Recklessness is gone, though. We'll see if Blizzard addresses that through another ability.

More changes after the jump...

Enslave Demon - Spell haste penalty reduced by 10%, Melee haste penalty reduced by 10%. Warlocks have an increased 10% spell hit chance with this spell.
Not terribly useful now that the Infernal and Doom Guard no longer need to be enslaved, this change rolls the Demonology talent Improved Enslave Demon into the baseline spell. Will there be demons in Ulduar? A Warlock can only dream.

Fire Shield (Imp) - You can now cast this ability on raid members, rather than party members.
Mandatory change now that most buffs are raid-wide.

Ritual of Summoning - The summoning of the initial portal is now instant cast, down from 5 seconds.
This is one of those 'quality of life' changes Blizzard talked about. Considering the spell doesn't even summon anyone (it just summons a portal), I'm thankful for this tiny change.

AFFLICTION

Eradication - Redesigned. When you deal damage with Corruption, you have a 2/4/6% chance to gain the Eradication effect. The Eradication effect increases the critical strike chance of your Shadow Bolt spell by 30%. Each critical strike reduces the critical strike bonus by 10%. Lasts 30 sec.
I can't do the math on this yet, but this looks like a good change that firmly cements Shadow Bolts in Affliction's spell repertoire. Just like the old Eradication, though, the first point in this talent is worth more than the next two, which only increase the chance to proc the effect.

Haunt - Now only increases your shadow damage-over-time on the target. (No longer includes non-Shadow damage over time spells.)
I think this is Blizzard's way of telling Affliction 'locks to remove Immolate from their rotation. A definite nerf.

Malediction - No longer increases the effect of Curse of the Elements.
Because the bonus effect was rolled into the highest rank of the baseline spell, Malediction is now just a vanilla increase in spell power. It's a buff to the class, a nerf to the spec. There are now better talents to spend three points on.

Pandemic - This talent has been reduced to a 1-point talent, now grants your Corruption and Unstable Affliction the capability to critically hit.
This should work identically to three points in the old Pandemic. A pretty good change that frees up two points.

Shadow Embrace - Now only increases the damage done by your shadow damage periodic spells.
The writing's on the wall: stop using Immolate. It's a destruction spell. This seems to be one of Blizzard's methods of 'simplifying Affliction's rotation'. A nerf to the talent.

Siphon Life - The Siphon Life spell has been removed. Siphon Life now causes your Corruption spell to instantly heal you for 40% of the damage done.
Again, this is one of Blizzard's ways of simplifying Affliction's complicated repertoire. However, this looks to me like a DPS reduction as it no longer drains life from the target. This is good for multi-target situations, however, allowing us to cast Corruption in succession for both damage and healing. It's a buff to Corruption but the talent itself no longer offers a DPS boost. This, along with the disincentive to cast Immolate, should reduce the debuffs Affliction Warlocks need to apply to a more manageable four (aside from Shadow Embrace) -- Haunt, Corruption, Unstable Affliction, and a curse.

Suppression - Now increases spell hit for all of your spells.
This is a great change, which means Affliction 'locks no longer have to go up Destruction just for Cataclysm. It's also on the first tier, which means all specs have access to it.

Before we move on, it's important to note that the DoT effect of Immolate is improved with the redesigned Aftermath, which is still low enough in the Destruction tree for Affliction Warlocks to get. Conceivably, the rotations can still include Immolate, but doesn't benefit from bonus effects as much as it used to.