h2>Patches change things. We all know this, and we've come to expect it from playing World of Warcraft as long as we have. Back in the old day, PvPing a Fire Mage was unbelievable. Every good Mage was frost. That was just the way you had to do things if you wanted to win. Yeah, you had the occasional arcane mage, but you never saw a purely Fire Mage going head to head with Warriors and Druids. Fire didn't work because it had no way of controlling the opponent. Yes, it could do damage, but that Warrior is going to outdamage you if he gets close, which Fire failed to prevent. Thing have changed. Fire Mages rejoice. It's time to get into PvP.
Honor Items Changes, BlizzCon Tournament, Fan Arts, Daily Blue2009-08-14 00:00:00New Honor Items and Gem Changes
The original post about Upcoming Honor Items and Honor Reset has been updated.Quote from: Eyonix (Source)
As many of you know we will be featuring a new Battleground, a dedicated world PvP zone and all new PvP items in Wrath of the Lich King. In order to make the transition from The Burning Crusade to Wrath of the Lich King flow as smoothly as possible, all accrued honor points will be reset at the launch of the expansion. We do this to ensure select players do not have an unfair advantage at level 80 from stockpiling honor to instantly purchase the newest Wrath of the Lich King PvP rewards. For those with unspent honor points prior to the release of the expansion, we will be offering a few upgrades and special rewards in next content patch solely for purchase via the honor system.
Update:
All of the gems that can be purchased with honor will have the Bind on Pickup and Unique-Equipped tags removed so multiples of them can be equipped and they can be traded (or auctioned). The new items that will be available are:
Cloaks - The Gladiator's Resolution, Cloak of Certain Reprieve, Volanthius Shroud, Sergeant's Reinforced Cape
Trinkets - Battlemaster's Courage, Battlemaster's Resolve, Battlemaster's Aggression, Battlemaster's Celerity
Note: The cost for the new items are still unknown.
BlizzCon Tournament Brackets and Player ProfilesQuote from: Blizzard (Source)
The brackets for the StarCraft, Warcraft III, and World of Warcraft Arena tournaments at BlizzCon are now live. These brackets show the starting matches and also provide some information about the contestants who will be competing in this year's BlizzCon tournaments. We will be updating these brackets during BlizzCon, so make sure to check back to see the latest tournament results and replays.
Check out the brackets here: StarCraft, Warcraft III, World of Warcraft Arena Tournament
New Fan Arts
The Blizzard Fan Art Section has been updated with new artwork.
Daily BluePTR Testing / Expansion launch / ZA Bear Mount
We have no released a date for when the patch that is in testing on the PTR will go live. But I agree with some of the people above in that there isn't a lot of time left since the expansion launches on November 13.
The current plan is to make it unobtainable with the upcoming patch. We are still doing some testing on this but this is how it should go. (src)
Wrath of the Lich King releasing on DVD only
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King will only be available on DVD, not on CDs. That goes for both the regular box and the Collector's Edition. (src)
Drak'Tharon Keep - Heroic Mode
The version of Trollgore you have is insanely brutal due to a bug that makes his Crush ability land as the exact same time as one of his melee swings. We've already fixed him internally, but I'll see if we can hotfix Trollgore so you can get past him and do the rest of the dungeon. (src)
Eye of Eternity - 10 Player
The issue where he seems to randomly face people all the time in phase 3 has been hotfixed. (src)
Silvermoon City Boss - Arcane Blast fixed in the next beta build
I fixed Arcane Blast for the next beta patch. (src)
Traveler's Tundra Mammoth
This is fixed in the next build. The "Mammoth-Tech" completely changed. If you bought the old Grand Caravan you're out 15k. Sorry!
If you have the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth you're ok for upcoming patches (no need to buy another one). You will be able to ask your vendors to leave (Eject!) and friends in your party may then take their seat. (src)
Loremaster achievements
Ok, here are the new numbers. They won't be in (most likely) until two beta builds from now:
Alliance - Eastern Kingdoms: 700 | Kalimdor: 730
Horde - Eastern Kingdoms: 550 | Kalmidor: 700 (src)
Death Knight
DK now do x2 dmg on melee/spell critical hits
Death knights now do double damage on melee and spell crits. Normally spell crits are only 1.5x damage.
This was an intended change. Death knights derive a lot of damage from spells, but not so much that it made sense to give them a talent to increase spell critical damage. It's just a passive bonus for them.
We were worried about certain specs not scaling as well with high levels of gear. (src)
Death and Decay damage lowered
Crypt Fever was removed from its damage, though apparently not for everyone?
That shouldn't have affected the damage for Blood and Frost though. We'll try to figure out what happened. We had no intention to nerf it. (src)
Does Blood Gorged need a buff?
It's somewhat balanced because the similar talents in Frost and Unholy are dependent on diseases, which are also unpredictable in PvP.
It's possible you will be doing 10% less damage than other classes, but A) if our balance is so good that you can detect that difference - yay, and B) PvP fights have a lot more to do with crowd control, interrupts, healing, burst damage and mana drain than overall dps. If we think these talents' relative weakness in PvP is the tipping point, of course we will revisit them. (src)
Druid
Typhoon
I believe there is a bug with rank 5. The others seem to work correctly. (src)
Hunter
Aimed Shot dmg will be lowered
We'll have to tone down the damage of Aimed Shot actually, probably in the ballpark of less than what it is now but more than what multi-shot does to a single target or arcane shot. We have not yet settled on the appropriate number.
In terms of their duration and cooldown, I think those are pretty in line with the Warrior variant. The idea behind this change is that the Hunter was intended to be a source of the "mortal strike wound" in group PvP, but keeping up the debuff is too difficult with a cast time. (src)
Trap Mastery will not be linked to Explosive Shot
It won't be, no worries. (src)
Bestial Wrath bug fix in the next build
We've actually fixed that bestial wrath bug recently, should be in the next build. (src)
Pets base health
We still are working on bumping the base health of the pets up. (src)
Lock and Load currently bugged
It is...
