It's Sunday morning and there are funnies to be had. From the beginning of manhood to alternative fuel sources, to pre-expansion doldrums, you should find something amusing in this week's lot. Newbies
Since the beginning of The Burning Crusade, I've wanted playable Ethereals. I don't care which faction or what classes, I just want to play an Ethereal. Heck, if all you could do with an ethereal character is walk around and emote, I would stlil roll one. I don't know why I'm so infatuated with them, but I pretty much like most things about them. Their design, their towns, the Consortium's debonaire way of operations.
The other Burning Crusade race I want to play is an Arakkoa. Specifically an Arakkoa Priest or Paladin. I don't like the birdmen as much as the blinkymen, but I found myself incredibly intrigued by the few Light-following arakkoa scattered around. I wanted to learn more about them, but there wasn't anymore to learn, unfortunately.
Now that I'm in the Wrath of the Lich King Beta, my new fascination is the Vrykul. Aesthetically, they are by far the most awesome race in WoW, and they're steeped in Norse lore which is just awesome. Their women look like they could destroy me with their bare hands, and the men seem like they have enough hair customization options to put a player race to shame. If these became a player race, I would reroll so fast.
Do you guys have any races you would just love to see playable? I have a lot of friends that would adore the chance to play a Goblin but I couldn't do that personally. Not a fan of Goblins. Are you after something a little more 'out there' like Nerubians? Are you a fan of a race from another setting that you'd love to be added to WoW?
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly weekend look at the first hero class, the Death Knight. Daniel Whitcomb is back after dealing with some light administrative work back at the Ebon Hold.
Inscription seems to be coming on to the beta server in bits and pieces, especially when it comes to the much looked for glyphs. One or two classes seem to trickle in each build, and in the latest build, it is the Death Knight's turn. Today, we'll take a quick look at the new Death Knight glyphs, and figure out how useful they'll be to the various playstyles and specs of the Death Knight. As always, it's worth noting that these are beta numbers, so things could change by the time Inscription and Death Knights see the light of day on live servers.
It looks like Blizzard isn't done tinkering with everything for Wrath of the Lich King. This time, they've turned their attention to racial abilities, which many have pointed out to be imbalanced. Kalgan dropped by the forums to answer a good question regarding the Orc racial Hardiness, which grants a passive 15% resistance to stuns. It's been nerfed a long way from its original 25% resistance, but the poster made a good point about the game's direction towards reduced durations instead of resistances.
Kalgan responds by saying that Hardiness was being changed into exactly that -- an effect duration reduction of 15%. He also goes over all the other racials, some of which were changed, others of which were buffed, and yet a few others of which were inevitably nerfed. The changes should make it into the next Beta push. Check after the break to see the complete list. [CLARIFICATION: This isn't the complete list of racial abilities. Abilities not listed here are unchanged or, if they will be changed, will be mentioned in the future.]
Each week, Arcane Brilliance journeys to the heart of Mageland, braves all the perils of Blinking backwards, premature sheep-breakage, and table-ninjas that infest that mystical place, and returns triumphant, bearing with it the spoils of its epic victory: one-to-two-thousand words, a center-aligned image of some type, and several dozen Wowhead links. It then distributes these treasures among the citizenry, spreading word of its conquests throughout the villages and townships, before kneeling before the King of Mageland and presenting him with the head of a Warlock.
And there is much rejoicing.
I don't know about you, but the idea of patch 3.0.2 scares the living crap out of me. I mean, I'm excited about a lot of it--changing my Mage's hairstyle and restoring his lower jaw, for instance (it still perplexes me how a barber can alter my entire facial structure)--but there are things about the impending patch that absolutely terrify me. Chief among these is that free respec.
Choosing a spec on the beta, where respecs cost a whopping 1 copper, has been difficult enough. Almost every talent we have now will be changed (in most cases improved), moved, or flat-out abolished when the patch hits, and many new talents will appear. Believe me when I say that none of the currently accepted level 70 talent specs will remain intact. In many ways, Mages, like every other class, are getting what amounts to a complete class reset. Everything we know about talent builds will essentially have to be forgotten and relearned. Even raids your guild knows frontward and back will become a crazy new adventure, and PvP will become a giant crap-shoot. The good news is that for at least that first week, the Arena playing field will be leveled completely.
But don't worry. Arcane Brilliance is here to help. Follow me after the break to see what kind of fun we can have with our 61 talent points after the patch hits.
Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we look to the future...
Raiding's in an interesting place at the moment. With the upcoming raid changes and dungeons we'll see in WotLK, a lot of people are looking forward and feeling less enthusiasm for the present. Some of those with bosses yet to kill in the game are becoming despondent at ever seeing the end of the tunnel, and people with everything on farm are finding excuses not to raid once they have their desired gear under their belts.
So what can raiders do now to prepare for the expansion, and how can raid guilds deal with the pre-expansion blues?
A much earlier data-mined image gave us a glimpse of what we could only assume were penguin noncombat pets, but reader Alassiel has written in to confirm that two of her characters in the beta have now received them in the mail. You can see Alassiel's screenshots of her Death Knight getting hers here and here.
Elizabeth Wachowski and Zach Yonzon braved a constantly-crashing beta server to get more information and pictures for us. It looks like the pet, named "Chilly," is currently being mailed to players in the beta as a gift for switching to a Blizzard account. And yes, it is pretty much the cutest thing ever, which I suspect is an effort to compensate for Northrend being a continent full of animated corpses. As Alassiel's gotten them on at least two characters so far, I assume it's being sent to all active toons on a Blizzard account. We're not sure if that's going to remain the only way to get Chilly, but if you're in the beta and have a Blizzard account (or want to switch to one -- it's free), don't forget to check your mailbox!
If you've ever been fascinated by the MMORPG statistics provided at sites like the Daedalus Project, here's something right up your alley; the WoW Armory Character Distribution widget, programmed to comb both the U.S. and E.U. Armories and capture data on the popularity of character names across race, class, faction, and sex.
The project is still in the testing stage, and it's a bit finicky about how you enter character names. Make sure you're always hitting the submit button and not using your enter key, as otherwise the widget will keep searching for the last name you looked for instead of your new query. Its creator, Emilis, also wrote to warn that it uses live information from both armories and will occasionally be slow as a result. I imagine it might also be inaccurate if either Armory is having problems.
The widget is tremendously fun to play with and has yielded some rather interesting results even with the completely random names I keep trying. "John" and "Mary," as you might expect, are overwhelmingly Human toons, whereas the greater share of people playing a "Sergei" and "Yekaterina" are Draenei. 3 people with a "Brutus" are actually playing female characters, and 1 person with a "Laura" is playing a male character (Emilis notes that gender-bending names are surprisingly common, although from what I can tell so far this seems to be a lot more true of male names for female toons than the other way around). Most people with a "Killer" are playing a Hunter, Rogue, or Warrior. Characters named "Bank" are mostly Human Warriors, but "Banktoon(s)" are mostly Orcs. And, yes, most of the people playing a toon named Legolas are Night Elf Hunters. Are you really that surprised?
I've been looking around for something exactly like this -- while Kaliban's Class Loot is a great resource for figuring out what kind of loot to dress in right before the endgame, and our gearing for Karazhan guides are a great resource for good drops and pieces around that level (including the rep sets you can get for each class and spec), the next biggest question to answer is "what comes after that?" And Gear Wishlist, a site made and sent to us by Darrell Anderson, tries to answer exactly that question.
After putting in your character and realm, you get a list of all the gear you've got equipped, matched up against a list of all the gear available at the item level you're looking at (you can customize exactly where the item levels come from, if there's a site whose estimations of the gear you value more), with yours highlighted. So basically, you get an up and down list of where to go from the gear you've got, and you can easily see where it all comes from and what kinds of stats it gives.
Of course, this is still more of a guideline -- just because gear appears above yours on this list doesn't mean that it's better than yours for your class and spec. And attainability is a big factor as well -- if you're not in a raiding guild, your time might be better spent grinding rep rather than trying to suffer through with PuGs. But as an overview of the gear available to you, Gear Wishlist works great. Hopefully the site will stay up under our linkage, and if it doesn't, check back in a few days to see if it's slowed down.
Yes, our weekly podcast is returning to the virtual airwaves this afternoon, and while Turpster is off cavorting around Florida, Duncor, myself, and BRK will be live on WoW Radio talking about the most popular stories in the past week of Warcraft. We're sure to hit on the whole Recruit-a-Friend leveling extravaganza (and if it's hurting the game), Blizzard's removal of the "first to 80" titles (and whether they are hurting the game), and the soon-to-be rarity of the Zul'Aman bears (and whether, you guessed it, that's hurting the game) and our favorite achievements (even though BRK thinks they're hurting the game).
Also, all three of us are in and playing the beta, so we'll do another live version of "Ask a Beta Tester" with the people in the IRC channel during the show -- you can join us on IRC at irc.mmoirc.org in the #wowradio channel, or send your question to theshow@wowinsider.com right now and we might answer it on the show for you.
I'm having a lot of fun with the new Inscription profession. Not necessarily as an Inscriber, but as the recipient of these cool new customization features. As Daniel noted the last time, the Warlock glyphs look pretty sweet, and more glyphs for Warlocks appeared recently in the WrathBeta. And just like the last time, a few of them really do look pretty spiffy, like this one for example...
Glyph of Drain Soul Your Drain Soul ability occasionally creates an additional soul shard. We might as well call this the Soul Shard specialization glyph -- an extra shard for Drain Soul? Yes please! Even if you pack your bag full with 28 Soul Shards before heading into an instance or raid, Warlocks still find themselves in situations where they run out of it, specially for those who have Shadowburn thrown in. Timing Drain Soul just right so it doesn't gimp your DPS is a pain in itself, so an extra shard for the effort is pure win. Besides, procs like these are like an Azerothian mini-lottery. This is also perfect for those lazy Warlocks -- and there are a ton of those -- who only bring a handful of shards to an instance.
The inimitable Matthew Rossi, our burly Shaman and Warrior expert, had his hands full with the overwhelming number of Warrior glyphs that popped up in the new WrathBeta build. Since the few Shaman glyphs this build got me a little excited -- more than the yawn-inducing Paladin ones last week, anyway -- I thought I'd cover this one while Matt does the heavy lifting with the Warrior changes.
Glyph of Water Breathing Your Water Breathing spell no longer requires a reagent. An excellent glyph. I'm a huge fan of these no-reagent glyphs for obvious reasons. Although Shiny Fish Scales are abundant and cheap, they do take up bag space. What I like about these types of glyphs is that they'll literally pay for themselves over time because there's a direct cost. The best part of this? It now works exactly like the Warlock spell and can be used as an additional buff in PvP without worrying about running out of Shiny Fish Scales (e.g., it still consumes a reagent in Arenas).
We were just talking about the state of protection warriors in the Beta, and lo and behond, not only do we get a new prot-heavy beta build to try out, but we also get those long sought warrior glyphs to drool over. So what are the big changes? Well, MMO Champion and World of Raids have the lists but some of the standouts are worth mentioning here.
For starters, warriors get a variety of changes aimed at tanking: Warbringerallows a prot warrior to charge in combat, in any stance, Thunder Clap's damage is increased by 50%, and Damage Shield, a new ability, causes warriors to deal damage whenever hit by a damaging attack or when they block an incoming attack equal to 10/20% of block value. With the new way strength adds to block, this is an indirectly scaling with AP ability. Improved Shield Block now is folded into Shield Mastery, Vitality now adds expertise in addition to strength and stamina, and several abilities have had their threat reduced but their direct damage increased to compensate. A change that surprised me greatly was seeing Sword and Board now adding yup to 15% critical strike chance to Devastate in addition to resetting Shield Slam's cooldown and reducing it's rage cost by 100%. This could make devastate a very attractive DPS option in the right gear.
And Shield Wall is back up to 60% damage reduction for 12 seconds. The Improved Shield Wall talent is gone, replaced by Improved Disciplines, which lowers the cooldown on Retaliation, Recklessness and Shield Wall by 60 seconds max.
I've been grinding as much Netherwing rep as I can lately, and this is definitely the most fun of the quests down there, if not the most fun daily quest ever.
Gets Disobedient Peons back up and working again, and fast.
As you might expect, the Booterang is a boot you can throw that will come back to you, whereever you are. It's part of the Netherwing rep questline, and involves a daily quest where you must search out Disobedient Dragonmaw Peons on Netherwing Ledge, toss the Booterang at them to give them an attitude adjustment, and then the boot flies back to you (and as you catch it, you do a great fist pump motion). It's great, great fun -- while the bombing daily quests are always a good time, and the Murloc de-mind-controlling on Sunwell Isle always brings a smile to my face, the Booterang is the best.
Unfortunately, the Booterang only works on Disobedient Peons on Netherwing Ledge, so using it to knock some sense into raiders who aren't paying attention or battleground members who aren't fighting at the flag is, unfortunately, out of the question. But maybe we'll see an upgraded Booterang in the expansion?
There is also a technique called "Booterang chasing" -- you can use the item from your mount, and since an epic mount is required to do the Netherwing quests, you actually move faster than the Booterang can come back to you. Since you can use it 20 times in a row, you can throw out 20 Booterangs at various peons, and as long as you keep moving, you can trail all 20 Booterangs behind you, spinning around you as they try to find their way back. The 'rangs can be trailed anywhere, too, so people can be seen flying around Shadowmoon Valley with a trail of spinning boots behind them.
How to Get It: There are lots of Netherwing quest line guides around (including an official one) -- to start the quests, you've got to first have a 300 riding skill, and then you'll have to grind a few dailiy quests until you get to Friendly reputation with the Netherwing Faction (by masquerading as a Dragonmaw Orc grunt). Once you hit Friendly, you'll get upgraded to an Overseer, and with the promotion comes your very own Booterang (which you've got to assemble with a quick quest that requires you to get some Knothide Leather, easily attained on the AH if you're not a skinner, and the hide of Tyrannus, a dinosaur hiding in the northernmost ecodome in Netherstorm).
Make your Booterang (the "There are many like it, but this one is yours" inscription, along with the text of the quests, comes straight from the great Full Metal Jacket), and then the next quest requires you to bust some Peon heads. And let me tell you -- after a day of slogging through the Netherwing mines dealing with all those Flayer respawns and fighting with other players over drops and mobs, there is nothing better than slinging a booterang around and telling some lazy orcs to get back to work.
Getting Rid of It: Unfortunately, you don't actually get it -- even though you "make" it by getting the mats together, the Overseer who gives you the quest keeps it when you turn the quest in. It sure is fun while you have it (and note to Blizzard: this would be a great leatherworking pattern, especially if you threw a stun or even a debuff on it), but when the quest is gone, so is your Booterang. Until the next day, anyway, when you can do the quest again.
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
If you've ever spent any time sitting in trade chat, you could probably make a list of some of the most popular enchants. Requested frequently, any enchanter possessing the the knowledge to imbue a weapon or piece of armor with the proper stats stands to make a fair amount of gold.
For example, a healer seeking Major Healing, or a meleer seeking Mongoose, will know the materials, and gather them. Each time they replace their respective weapons, back into trade they will go to request the enchant.
Today, Insider Trader presents a list of some of the most requested enchants with information about how to obtain them so that you can offer them to friends, guildmates, and your server.
It is by no means a complete list, but it will get you off to a shining start and provide you with quite a to-do list. Check out the comments section for helpful details as well.
Drop rate data was gathered from the Armory, and Blizzard uses ranges such as Very Low (1-2%). This is narrowed down with data from Wowhead where appropriate, but keep in mind that some bind on pick-up recipes can only be seen by enchanters, and Wowhead cannot filter out that data, making their estimate much lower than the actual drop rate.
In the next couple of weeks, I'll be working on the faction recipes series, focusing on enchanting, so stay tuned.
It's Sunday morning and there are funnies to be had. From the beginning of manhood to alternative fuel sources, to pre-expansion doldrums, you should find something amusing in this week's lot.
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